# Inkling 2 Small vs Ornith-1.5-9B (slim)

> Ornith-1.5-9B scores 61 (C) to Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-12
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Ornith-1.5-9B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on risk and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Inkling 2 Small: C 58.8, rank #102 of 161 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inkling-2-small.min.md
- Ornith-1.5-9B: C 61, rank #51 of 161 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ornith-1-5-9b.min.md
- Inkling 2 Small, good 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; Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 31.
- Ornith-1.5-9B, good for Local coding and terminal agents on a laptop or a single consumer GPU, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required Ahead on Reach, 95 against 40.

| Category | Inkling 2 Small | Ornith-1.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 40 | 95 |
| Risk (20%) | 65 | 50 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 85 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 67 | 31 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Inkling 2 Small | Ornith-1.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Thinking Machines Lab | Ornith |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Last release | 2026-11-12 | 2026-08-23 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Reach, Ornith-1.5-9B +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.); Ornith-1.5-9B 95 (Memory 30, since Ornith's own MLX 4-bit build is 5.0 GB and needs about 6.0 GB with the fifth added, and its Q4_K_M GGUF and Ollama's build fit 16 GB too.)
- Documentation and upkeep, Inkling 2 Small +36: Inkling 2 Small 67 (Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off.); Ornith-1.5-9B 31 (Model card 11, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters and context but not limitations, languages or a knowledge cut-off.)
- Risk, Inkling 2 Small +15: Inkling 2 Small 65 (File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code to run.); Ornith-1.5-9B 50 (File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and no Python in any of Ornith's repositories, so the card's --trust-remote-code flag loads nothing from the repositor…)