# Inkling 2 Small vs Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct (slim)

> Inkling 2 Small scores 58.8 (C) to Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct's 54.9 (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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Inkling 2 Small scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct's 54.9 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct leads on reach. 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
- Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct: C 54.9, rank #125 of 161 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/qwen3-vl-8b-instruct.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 55; Agent interface, 85 against 60; Documentation and upkeep, 67 against 31.
- Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct, good for An agent with 8 GB or more to spare that needs a local model to read images, documents and video Ahead on Reach, 100 against 40.

| Category | Inkling 2 Small | Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 40 | 100 |
| Risk (20%) | 65 | 55 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 60 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 67 | 31 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Inkling 2 Small | Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Thinking Machines Lab | Alibaba (Qwen team) |
| Last release | 2026-11-12 | 2025-11-01 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Reach, Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct +60: 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.); Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct 100 (Alibaba's own Q4_K_M GGUF is 5.03 GB, so with a fifth added it needs about 6 GB and fits in 16 GB (30).)
- Documentation and upkeep, Inkling 2 Small +36: Inkling 2 Small 67 (Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off.); Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct 31 (The card misses limitations, languages and a cut-off (11).)
- Agent interface, Inkling 2 Small +25: Inkling 2 Small 85 (Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository.); Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct 60 (A Jinja chat template in the repository (20).)
- Risk, Inkling 2 Small +10: Inkling 2 Small 65 (File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code to run.); Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct 55 (Safetensors and GGUF only and no code in the repositories, so the FP8 card's trust_remote_code flag runs nothing (25).)