Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Inkling vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
Inkling scores 64.2 (B) on agent readiness against MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B's 61 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Inkling B
Best for Agents calling a hosted open multimodal model with audio input, or teams with a multi-GPU datacentre node who want to run it themselves.
Ahead on
- Risk, 70 against 60
- Agent interface, 85 against 70
- Documentation and upkeep, 82 against 40
Also in its favour
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.3 out of 5
Watch for
The smallest build Thinking Machines publishes needs about 710 GB, beyond any single workstation
Best for Researchers and agents that want a small coding and terminal-agent model to fine-tune further, on a 24 GB GPU or larger.
Ahead on
- Reach, 70 against 50
Watch for
Only BF16 from Xiaomi, about 23 GB to run
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Inkling | MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 50 | 70 | MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +20 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 70 | 60 | Inkling +10 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 70 | Inkling +15 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 82 | 40 | Inkling +42 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | B 64.2/100 | C 61/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Inkling | MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | Thinking Machines Lab | Xiaomi (MiMo team) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT (metadata only, no LICENSE file); built on Qwen3.5-9B under Apache 2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-07-23 | 2026-09-21 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | ||
| Terms restrict automated access | ||
| Terms restrict benchmarking | ||
| Terms or service can change without notice | ||
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | ||
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | 2.3/5 (4) |
Verdicts
Inkling
Thinking Machines' large multimodal generalist, stronger than Inkling-Small on factual recall by its own numbers. It needs about 710 GB of datacentre GPU memory even in NVFP4, so most agents will use a host such as Together AI or Tinker. The main risks are a use policy that binds on download and can change, and no outside safety results.
MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
A 9B cousin tuned on MiMo-V2.6's agent work for coding, terminal tasks and visual coding, released as a base for RL research. It needs about 23 GB in BF16, since Xiaomi ships no smaller build. The main risks are no safety results while a seventh of its tuning is offensive security, and nobody at Xiaomi answering reports.
Before you call either
Inkling
- Unless you have a multi-GPU Blackwell or H200 node, call it through Together AI, Fireworks, DeepInfra or Tinker rather than starting it
- On 8 B200 GPUs, SGLang's recipe is
sglang serve --trust-remote-code --model-path thinkingmachines/Inkling-NVFP4 --tp 8 --quantization modelopt_fp4 --enable-multimodal --reasoning-parser inkling --tool-call-parser inkling - Use the inkling tool parser, not Hermes, and the inkling reasoning parser
- Pass
reasoning_effortas none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default) or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99. The repository's template has no xhigh preset and raises an error for it, though Thinking Machines' docs list xhigh - Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
- Audio should be 16 kHz WAV, ideally under 20 minutes, and images 40 to 4096 px a side, per the card
- Read the Model Acceptable Use Policy before deploying, it binds on download and bars some uses that are legal
MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Serve it as the card does,
sglang serve --model-path XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B --reasoning-parser mimo, and add--tool-call-parser mimofor parsed tool calls - SGLang's mimo reasoning parser expects thinking to be asked for, so pass
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingtrue, as the card does, and readreasoning_content - Calls come back as function and parameter blocks inside tool_call, the same shape vLLM's and SGLang's qwen3_coder parsers read
- The generation config samples at temperature 0.6, top_k 20 and top_p 0.95
- Images and video go in through Qwen3.5's processor; the template's audio tokens have no audio encoder behind them
- The MTP head isn't in the files, so skip MTP speculative decoding even though config.json lists a layer
- It's an SFT checkpoint meant for further RL, and discussions report runaway generation on llama.cpp, so cap max_tokens
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Inkling or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B?
Inkling scores 64.2 (B) on agent readiness against MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B's 61 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B leads on reach.
Other comparisons with Inkling or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Agents-A1-4B vs Inkling
- Agents-A1-4B vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Apertus v1.5 8B vs Inkling
- Apertus v1.5 8B vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Apodex-1.1-mini vs Inkling
- Apodex-1.1-mini vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- BigBang-v1 vs Inkling
- BigBang-v1 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Cosmos-Reason2-2B vs Inkling
- Cosmos-Reason2-2B vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Darwin-36B-Opus vs Inkling
- Darwin-36B-Opus vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- DeepSeek-V3.2 vs Inkling
- DeepSeek-V3.2 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Inkling
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs Inkling
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs Inkling
- DiffusionGemma 26B A4B IT vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Gemma 4 12B IT vs Inkling
- Gemma 4 12B IT vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Gemma 4 26B A4B IT vs Inkling
- Gemma 4 26B A4B IT vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Gemma 4 31B IT vs Inkling
- Gemma 4 31B IT vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Gemma 4 E2B IT vs Inkling
- Gemma 4 E2B IT vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Gemma 4 E4B IT vs Inkling
- Gemma 4 E4B IT vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- GLM-4.5-Air vs Inkling
- GLM-4.5-Air vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- GLM-4.7-Flash vs Inkling
- GLM-4.7-Flash vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- GLM-5.3-Flash vs Inkling
- GLM-5.3-Flash vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- GLM-5.3 vs Inkling
- GLM-5.3 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- gpt-oss-120b vs Inkling
- gpt-oss-120b vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- gpt-oss-20b vs Inkling
- gpt-oss-20b vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Granite 4.2 3B vs Inkling
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- Hy3 vs Inkling
- Hy3 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Inkling-Small vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Inkling vs Inkling-Small
- Inkling vs InternVL3.5-GPT-OSS-20B-A4B-Preview
- Inkling vs Kimi K3
- Inkling vs Kolibri-1
- Inkling vs Laguna M.1
- Inkling vs Laguna S 2.1
- Inkling vs Laguna XS 2.1
- Inkling vs LFM2.5-2.6B
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- Inkling vs MiniCPM-o 4.5
- Inkling vs MiniCPM5-2B
- Inkling vs MiniMax-M2.5
- Inkling vs MiniMax-M2.7
- Inkling vs Muse Glimmer 30B
- Inkling vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B
- Inkling vs Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B
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- Inkling vs Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B
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- Inkling vs occamy-1.0
- Inkling vs Olmo 3 7B Think
- Inkling vs Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B
- Inkling vs Ornith-1.5-397B
- Inkling vs Ornith-1.5-9B
- Inkling vs Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507
- Inkling vs Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507
- Inkling vs Qwen3.5-0.8B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.5-122B-A10B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.5-2B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.5-4B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.5-9B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.6-27B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.8-27B
- Inkling vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- Inkling vs Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Inkling vs Qwen3-Coder-Next
- Inkling vs Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Inkling vs Qwen3-VL-2B-Instruct
- Inkling vs Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct
- Inkling vs Qwen3-VL-32B-Instruct
- Inkling vs Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct
- Inkling vs Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct
- Inkling vs Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2
- Inkling vs SmolLM3-3B
- Inkling vs Spark-X2.6-4B
- Inkling vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B
- Inkling vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- Inkling vs ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
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- Kimi K3 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Kolibri-1 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Laguna M.1 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
- Laguna S 2.1 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
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- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs MiniMax-M2.5
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- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Muse Glimmer 30B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B A3B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B
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- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3.5-2B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3.5-4B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3.5-9B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3.6-27B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3.8-27B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3-Coder-Next
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3-VL-2B-Instruct
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Instruct
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3-VL-32B-Instruct
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Qwopus3.8-27B-Flash-V2
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs SmolLM3-3B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Spark-X2.6-4B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B vs ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/inkling-vs-mimo-v2-6-distill-qwen-9b.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/inkling.json·/api/v1/tools/mimo-v2-6-distill-qwen-9b.json - From a terminal
anchor compare inkling mimo-v2-6-distill-qwen-9b(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "inkling", "b": "mimo-v2-6-distill-qwen-9b"}at/mcp, no key