Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Inkling 2 Small vs Ling-3.0-tiny

Inkling 2 Small scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Ling-3.0-tiny's 56.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Ling-3.0-tiny leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6472 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Inkling 2 Small C

Best for Teams with 512 GB or more of datacentre GPU memory who want Thinking Machines' newest open multimodal agent model and can run a runtime's pre-release image.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 65 against 50
  • Agent interface, 85 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 56

Watch for

The smaller checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and Thinking Machines says 500 GB of GPU memory

Ling-3.0-tiny C

Best for Agents on a laptop or small GPU that want a fast local model for tool calls and short reasoning, under MIT

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 40

Watch for

No inference provider is listed on the Hub and no inclusionAI API serves it

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach Ling-3.0-tiny +55

Inkling 2 Small 40

Memory 0 of 30, the smallest build is Thinking Machines' NVFP4 checkpoint at 393.5 GB, about 472 GB with a fifth added, above the 256 GB line. Runtimes 0, no released version of the six runs it; vLLM and SGLang serve it from their own images and Transformers has it on its main branch only. Builds 15, two precisions from the publisher (NVFP4 and MXFP8). Terms 10, Apache 2.0 with a binding acceptable use policy on top, read as a custom licence. Download 10, no gate. Hosted 5, Thinking Machines' own Tinker serves it as beta serverless inference, and Together is live on Hugging Face. 0 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 40.

Ling-3.0-tiny 95

Memory earns the full 30, since inclusionAI's own Q4_K_M GGUF is 4.8 GB, about 6 GB with a fifth added. Runtimes earn the full 25, from released Transformers, vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp, and Ollama, whose v0.40.14 (2 November 2026) pins llama.cpp b11963 with the bailingmoe3 architecture (Ollama v0.40.7 of 20 October already pinned b11738, which has it). LM Studio has nothing. Builds earn 15 for FP8, INT4 and four GGUF precisions from inclusionAI. MIT with nothing added gives terms the full 15 and the ungated repositories give download the full 10. Hosted too scores 0, because the Hub's model page lists no inference provider and no inclusionAI or Ant Group API serving it was found.

Agent interface Inkling 2 Small +25

Inkling 2 Small 85

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Thinking Machines' tml-renderers guide shows how tools are declared and how calls come back for this model, and its package ships the parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls in one turn. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 10, thinking effort is set per request from none to xhigh, and the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content. Context 10, up to 1M tokens. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

Ling-3.0-tiny 60

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the format is only in the template and the card names the ling3 parser in commands without describing it, while SGLang uses another parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic results on the card. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, thinking turns off per request but the card doesn't say where the reasoning comes back. Context 10, 131,072 tokens native.

Risk Inkling 2 Small +15

Inkling 2 Small 65

File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code to run. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation Thinking Machines links to, with a SHA-256 on every LFS file. Safety evaluation 10, Thinking Machines' own StrongREJECT, FORTRESS, HoneyBench and DistressBench results and described outside red-teaming, but nothing an outside party published or a harness to rerun. Agent guidance 5, the card names safeguards to add but doesn't say what its refusals cover, with nothing on prompt injection. Licence risk 5, 10 off for a use policy that reaches beyond the law and that can change at any time. Security programme 5, a security.txt and a disclosure policy, with public advisories unchecked and scored as absent. 25 + 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 65.

Ling-3.0-tiny 50

File safety gets 15, safetensors and GGUF only, but the card's vLLM command runs the repository's config code with --trust-remote-code. Provenance gets 15 for files in inclusionAI's own organisation with a checksum on each. Safety evaluation is 0, since SingProbe's results grade the probe, not the model. Agent guidance gets 5 for the SingProbe guardrail inclusionAI publishes for this model, with no statement of trained refusals. MIT carries no licence deductions (15). No security contact or disclosure policy was found (0).

Documentation and upkeep Inkling 2 Small +11

Inkling 2 Small 67

Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off. Training data 15, an EU training-content summary with sources, mix, an October 2026 collection cut-off and filtering. Last change 20, the files were uploaded on 12 November 2026. Responsiveness 0, the repository has no questions yet, which reads as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 10, the files agree and no broken-file report waits. 17 + 15 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 67.

Ling-3.0-tiny 56

Model card 11, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't. Training data 15, a data card with sources, size, cut-off and filtering. Last change 15, the newest commit is still the card change of 24 September 2026, 41 days before 4 November. Responsiveness 10, six of 16 discussions answered by an inclusionAI member, some. Version policy 5, a first release at this size. File health 0, the card's MTP recipe contradicts the files and a broken index size waits without a reply.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInkling 2 SmallLing-3.0-tinyEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254095Ling-3.0-tiny +55
Risk20%206550Inkling 2 Small +15
Agent interface10%108560Inkling 2 Small +25
Documentation and upkeep10%106756Inkling 2 Small +11
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 58.8/100C 56.2/100

Facts side by side

FactInkling 2 SmallLing-3.0-tiny
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorThinking Machines LabinclusionAI (Ant Group)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-122026-08-31
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Inkling 2 Small

Thinking Machines' newest open model, a 594B mixture-of-experts generalist with images in, several tool calls a turn and per-request thinking effort. The NVFP4 checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and no released runtime runs it yet, so today that means vLLM's or SGLang's own images, or Tinker and Together hosted. The use policy binds on download and can change.

Ling-3.0-tiny

A small, quick hybrid reasoning model for local agent work, tool calls and coding, under MIT. It runs in about 6 GB from inclusionAI's 4-bit GGUF in released Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Ollama, with no host. The risks are a card that doesn't match the files in places, a vLLM route running repository code, and no safety results.

Before you call either

Inkling 2 Small

  1. No released runtime runs it yet. Serve the NVFP4 checkpoint from SGLang's dev-inkling-2-small image with the cookbook's recipe for your hardware, or from vLLM's vllm/vllm-openai:inkling-2-small image
  2. In vLLM pass --reasoning-parser inkling --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser inkling. In SGLang the tool-call parser is inkling2 and the reasoning parser inkling
  3. Transformers' main branch loads only thinkingmachines/Inkling-2-Small-MXFP8, the 622.8 GB checkpoint, and no release has the code yet
  4. Pass reasoning_effort as none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default), xhigh or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99
  5. Effort none conditions the model toward no reasoning but doesn't forbid it, and higher effort needs a larger max_tokens
  6. Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
  7. Images should be 40 to 4096 px a side. The model takes no audio, and the template raises an error for an audio part
  8. Use guided decoding or validate JSON yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  9. Without the hardware, call it on Tinker's OpenAI-compatible endpoint with a Tinker key, at $0.30 input and $1.00 output per million tokens as read on 6 November 2026
  10. Read the Model Acceptable Use Policy before deploying, it binds on download and bars some uses that are legal

Ling-3.0-tiny

  1. Start it with llama-server -hf inclusionAI/Ling-3.0-tiny-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 32768, which needs llama.cpp b11772 or a recent release with bailingmoe3
  2. With vLLM 0.32.0, vllm serve inclusionAI/Ling-3.0-tiny --trust-remote-code --enable-prefix-caching --mamba-cache-mode align --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser ling3 --reasoning-parser ling3, which runs the repository's config code
  3. With SGLang 0.5.22, its cookbook uses --reasoning-parser deepseek-r1 --tool-call-parser glm45 for this model, and drop the card's NEXTN flags since tiny has no MTP layer
  4. Thinking is on by default, pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks
  5. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 20
  6. The template keeps earlier reasoning in the prompt, which grows long agent sessions
  7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented
  8. For a guardrail, inclusionAI's Ling-3.0-tiny-singprobe scores intent, unsafe output and hallucination per token, but only through SGLang and vLLM integration branches

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Inkling 2 Small or Ling-3.0-tiny?

Inkling 2 Small scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Ling-3.0-tiny's 56.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Ling-3.0-tiny leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Inkling 2 Small or Ling-3.0-tiny

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