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

Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3.5-0.8B

Inkling 2 Small scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3.5-0.8B's 46.7 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3.5-0.8B 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 55
  • Agent interface, 85 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 37

Watch for

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

Qwen3.5-0.8B D

Best for Builders who want a near-free local helper or fine-tuning base for narrow tasks on a phone-class device, laptop or CPU

Ahead on

  • Reach, 80 against 40

Watch for

No quantised build from Alibaba and no inference provider found

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 Qwen3.5-0.8B +40

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.

Qwen3.5-0.8B 80

Memory earns the full 30, since LM Studio's Q4_K_M build with its projector is 0.73 GB (0.88 GB with the fifth added) and Ollama's Q8_0 build was 1.0 GB, both far within 16 GB. Alibaba publishes no quantised 0.8B, so builds scores 0. Runtimes reach the 25 cap on llama.cpp, Ollama (through its pinned llama.cpp), vLLM, SGLang, LM Studio and Transformers. Apache 2.0 with nothing added gives terms 15 and the ungated repository download 10. Hosted too scores 0, as the Hub maps no inference provider to this size. 30+25+0+15+10+0 = 80.

Documentation and upkeep Inkling 2 Small +30

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.

Qwen3.5-0.8B 37

The card covers six of the seven items, missing only a cut-off (17), because it states the intended uses and warns about thinking loops. Training data is a general description without a cut-off (5). The files last changed on 2 March 2026, 248 days before this check, within a year (5). No Qwen member has answered any of the 15 discussions that aren't pull requests (0). Qwen3-0.6B stays in its own repository without a dated note (5), and a template fix and the missing generation_config.json wait unanswered (5). 17+5+5+0+5+5 = 37.

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.

Qwen3.5-0.8B 60

The template ships in the repository (20) and the model was trained for tool use with several calls per turn in the template (20). Tool-calling format gets 10, because the card names the qwen3_coder parser but leaves the format to the template. Reasoning control scores 0, since the card shows how to turn thinking on but not where the reasoning comes back. 262,144 tokens is native (10). Structured output scores 0, as nothing documents JSON output for the model. 20+10+20+0+0+10 = 60.

Risk Inkling 2 Small +10

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.

Qwen3.5-0.8B 55

Safetensors only with no remote code gives file safety its 25, and files in the Qwen organisation the publisher's GitHub links to, each with a hash on the Hub, give provenance 15. The Apache 2.0 licence carries none of the deductions, so licence risk keeps 15. Safety evaluation, agent guidance and a security programme score 0, since the card has no safety results or agent cautions and no reporting route was found. The Qwen3.5 blog and Alibaba's security response centre couldn't be read, so those are scored as absent and left open. 25+15+0+0+15+0 = 55.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runInkling 2 SmallQwen3.5-0.8BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%254080Qwen3.5-0.8B +40
Risk20%206555Inkling 2 Small +10
Agent interface10%108560Inkling 2 Small +25
Documentation and upkeep10%106737Inkling 2 Small +30
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 58.8/100D 46.7/100

Facts side by side

FactInkling 2 SmallQwen3.5-0.8B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorThinking Machines LabAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-122026-03-02
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.

Qwen3.5-0.8B

A tiny vision-language model for prototypes, fine-tuning and narrow local steps such as routing, tagging or reading an image. It runs in about 1 GB at 4 or 8 bits in six runtimes under plain Apache 2.0. Keep thinking off, since the card warns it loops. The card has no safety results, and Qwen has answered none of its discussions.

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

Qwen3.5-0.8B

  1. Smallest start is ollama run qwen3.5:0.8b, or qwen3.5:0.8b-q8_0 at 1.0 GB
  2. Full precision vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3.5-0.8B --port 8000 --max-model-len 262144 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. Thinking is off by default; if you turn it on with "chat_template_kwargs": {"enable_thinking": true}, stream and cut off runaway output, since the card warns of thinking loops, and add --reasoning-parser qwen3 in vLLM or SGLang to split the reasoning out
  4. There's no generation_config.json, so pass the card's sampling yourself, for example temperature=1.0, top_p=1.0, top_k=20, presence_penalty=2.0 for text without thinking
  5. Use it for narrow steps or as a fine-tuning base, not as the main agent, as the card itself suggests
  6. Validate any JSON it returns, since structured output isn't documented

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Inkling 2 Small or Qwen3.5-0.8B?

Inkling 2 Small scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3.5-0.8B's 46.7 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3.5-0.8B leads on reach.

Other comparisons with Inkling 2 Small or Qwen3.5-0.8B

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