# Inkling 2 Small vs Nemotron 3.5 Super VL

> Nemotron 3.5 Super VL scores 59.3 (C) to Inkling 2 Small's 52.1 (D) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inkling-2-small-vs-nemotron-3-5-super-vl
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inkling-2-small-vs-nemotron-3-5-super-vl.md (~5,350 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-06

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 52.1 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on transparency & trust. Both do llm inference.

- Inkling 2 Small: grade D, 52.1/100, rank #899 of 1354. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inkling-2-small.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/inkling-2-small.json
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL: grade C, 59.3/100, rank #637 of 1354. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nemotron-3-5-super-vl.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nemotron-3-5-super-vl.json
- Best model APIs and inference for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/inference/index.md
- All 596 models comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inference/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Inkling 2 Small (D)

Good for: Developers who want a capable multimodal open-family model through an OpenAI-compatible API today, or to fine-tune it on Tinker, and who can live with a beta surface until the weights are published.

Ahead on:
- Transparency & trust, 64 against 58

Watch for: Serverless inference and the OpenAI-compatible API are both labelled beta, with a waitlist for higher throughput

### Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (C)

Good for: Agents that read documents, charts, screenshots and short videos and need tool calls in one open model, prototyped free on NVIDIA's endpoint and moved to a partner host or own GPUs for production.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 58 against 30
- Payments & pricing, 35 against 20

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: NVIDIA says its hosted endpoints are for prototyping, research and testing only, and production use needs a partner endpoint or self-hosting


## Why the edge

### Reliability: Nemotron 3.5 Super VL +28

- Inkling 2 Small (30): Model reading, for the surface it's called on, Tinker's serverless inference and OpenAI-compatible API. No status page found, per the tinker listing's checks of 1 October and 4 November (0), so no readable incident history (5). The only published limit is the in-flight sample cap of 2,000, per the tinker listing's 1 October check; the OpenAI-compatible page gives no numbers and says higher or more stable throughput needs the waitlist (10). The SDK retries sampling with stable request IDs, per the tinker listing's reading of the SDK repository; the OpenAI-compatible page has no retry guidance (15). No SLA found (0). Serverless inference is 'currently in beta' on the models and pricing page and the OpenAI-compatible API is labelled Beta, read 6 November (0). 0 + 5 + 10 + 15 + 0 + 0 = 30.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (58): Hosted reading, for NVIDIA's trial endpoint. status.ngc.nvidia.com is a Statuspage site with NVIDIA Build and Cloud Functions components and a readable history (20). In the 90 days to 4 November, re-read from history.atom, two incidents, both minor for an API caller, and none posted since 29 September. SMS verification for NVIDIA Build was unavailable in China from 23 to 29 September, which affects sign-up, and on 10 August new Cloud Functions deployments failed for about three hours while existing deployments kept running (20). build.nvidia.com gives limits of up to 40 requests a minute and 10,000 a day, and says they vary by model and with other users' traffic (12 of 15). The OpenAPI file documents a 202 pending result with an `NVCF-REQID` to poll, but no 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance, and NVIDIA's FAQ says to expect long waits under load (3 of 15). No SLA for the trial. NVIDIA's SLAs come with AI Enterprise for self-hosted software (0). The card says v1.0 GA, but the hosted page calls the model early access and NVIDIA calls the catalogue a trial for prototyping only (3 of 10). The model page re-read on 4 November still says early access, with a free endpoint marked available and 40 rpm. 20+20+12+3+0+3 = 58.

### Payments & pricing: Nemotron 3.5 Super VL +15

- Inkling 2 Small (20): Published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Per-million-token prices for serverless inference and training published without a login on 6 November (20). No free tier listed, and the quickstart asks for payment details before training, per the tinker listing (0). Sign-up is a browser flow (0). 0 + 20 + 0 + 0 = 20.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (35): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). The hosted endpoint is free and says so without a login, and the production routes are priced in public (AI Enterprise at $4,500 a GPU a year, partner hosts per million tokens), but the free endpoint can't be used in production and has no per-call price of its own (15 of 20). Free with no card per build.nvidia.com/llms.txt (20). A person signs in at build.nvidia.com, which uses SMS verification per the status page, to generate a key. No keyless or programmatic route (0). 35.

### Transparency & trust: Inkling 2 Small +6

- Inkling 2 Small (64): Editorial half. Closed for now under the Tinker Terms of Use and the Model Acceptable Use Policy, per the model card, with Apache 2.0 weights promised the week after launch (15). Terms commit not to use Customer Content for training, keep it only as needed, with a DPA and deletion on request; the privacy notice wasn't re-read, per the tinker listing (15). Dated deprecation notices with no stated period (15). The DPA annex names Google Cloud, Cloudflare, WorkOS and OpenAI with service and location (15). 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 60.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (58): Weights under OpenMDW-1.1, a short permissive licence from the Linux Foundation with no field-of-use limits, but not an OSI licence. Datasets and training recipes are released. The hosted trial is under terms we couldn't read, and the OpenAPI file names a different model licence and the AI Enterprise EULA (22 of 30). NVIDIA's privacy policy (22 September 2025) doesn't address API prompts. The model page says use is logged for security and to improve NVIDIA products, with improvement data not linked to identity, and gives no retention period. The trial terms that may say more were unread (8 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices for catalogue models. The page carries an `isDeprecated` flag only (3 of 20). The quickstart says hosted endpoints run on NVIDIA DGX Cloud, but no subprocessors or data locations for the catalogue were found (5 of 20). `langchain-nvidia-ai-endpoints`, the listing's package, sends aggregate usage counts to NVIDIA by default for hosted endpoints, disclosed in its README with `NVIDIA_USAGE_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false` as the opt-out, and its envelope sets user, device and session fields to "undefined", as the README says. Disclosed, so no term. 22+8+3+5 = 38.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Inkling 2 Small | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 30 | 58 | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL +28 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 74 | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 62 | 65 | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 54 | Inkling 2 Small +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 35 | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 75 | 71 | Inkling 2 Small +4 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 58 | Inkling 2 Small +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **52.1 · D** | **59.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Inkling 2 Small | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Thinking Machines Lab | NVIDIA |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://tinker.thinkingmachines.dev/services/tinker-prod/oai/api/v1` | `https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary for now, used through Tinker under the Tinker Terms of Use and Thinking Machines' Model Acceptable Use Policy, per the model card. Thinking Machines says it will publish the weights under Apache 2.0 the week after launch, once outside safety testing is done | OpenMDW-1.1 for the weights (permissive, not an OSI licence). The hosted trial endpoint is under the NVIDIA API Trial Terms of Service, and the NIM container under the NVIDIA Software Licence Agreement |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-15 |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | no date given |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

## How the scores have moved

### Inkling 2 Small

No score change since it was listed.

### Nemotron 3.5 Super VL

- +0.5 on 4 November 2026: correction
- -0.2 on 30 October 2026: checklist
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**Inkling 2 Small.** A new multimodal mixture-of-experts model from Thinking Machines, callable today through Tinker's OpenAI-compatible endpoint at $0.30 and $1.00 per million tokens, with strong vendor-reported coding and agent scores. Tinker's serverless inference is beta, with no status page or SLA, and the weights aren't public yet.

**Nemotron 3.5 Super VL.** NVIDIA's free endpoint takes OpenAI-format requests with typed tool calls, JSON Schema output and an OpenAPI 3.1 file, and the weights run anywhere under a permissive licence. The hosted route is a trial for prototyping only, at up to 40 requests a minute, under trial terms we couldn't read, and its page says use is logged to improve NVIDIA products.

## Before you call either

### Inkling 2 Small

1. Call https://tinker.thinkingmachines.dev/services/tinker-prod/oai/api/v1 with an OpenAI client and TINKER_API_KEY, using /chat/completions
2. The serverless model ID is thinkingmachines/Inkling-2-Small:peft:262144:sampling-nvfp4, per Tinker's pricing page. The OpenAI page's examples use your own checkpoint paths, so confirm it before relying on it
3. Pass reasoning_effort as none to xhigh or 0.0 to 0.99 (default 0.9); reasoning arrives in reasoning_content unless separate_reasoning is false
4. Keep images between 40 and 4096 px a side, per the model card
5. Validate JSON yourself, since structured output and the tool-call format aren't documented
6. Plan for a move to open weights. When they publish, the open-weights listing will carry sizes and runtimes

### Nemotron 3.5 Super VL

1. Set `chat_template_kwargs` to `{"enable_thinking": false}` for short tasks. Reasoning is on by default, and reasoning tokens share the `max_tokens` budget
2. Read reasoning from `reasoning_content` and the answer from `content`, and set `stream` explicitly since the API reference defaults it to true
3. Don't send confidential or personal data to the hosted trial. The model page asks callers not to and says use is logged
4. Back off and retry on throttling. Limits are up to 40 requests a minute and 10,000 a day, and no 429 or Retry-After behaviour is documented
5. For production, use a partner endpoint or serve the weights. When self-hosting with NVIDIA's vLLM command, drop `--allowed-local-media-path=/` unless clients are trusted
6. Set `NVIDIA_USAGE_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false` if you use `langchain-nvidia-ai-endpoints` and don't want aggregate usage counts sent to NVIDIA

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Inkling 2 Small or Nemotron 3.5 Super VL?

Nemotron 3.5 Super VL scores 59.3 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 52.1 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on transparency & trust.

### Do Inkling 2 Small and Nemotron 3.5 Super VL need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Inkling 2 Small and Nemotron 3.5 Super VL without installing anything?

Yes. Inkling 2 Small has a hosted endpoint at https://tinker.thinkingmachines.dev/services/tinker-prod/oai/api/v1 and Nemotron 3.5 Super VL at https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inkling-2-small-vs-nemotron-3-5-super-vl.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inkling-2-small-vs-nemotron-3-5-super-vl.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "inkling-2-small", "b": "nemotron-3-5-super-vl"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare inkling-2-small nemotron-3-5-super-vl`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/inkling-2-small.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nemotron-3-5-super-vl.json

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- [Claude API vs Nemotron 3.5 Super VL](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anthropic-api-vs-nemotron-3-5-super-vl.md)
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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp