Inkling Small vs Llama 4 Maverick
Which is better for the money: Inkling Small by Thinking Machines or Llama 4 Maverick by Meta? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Inkling Small scores 16.4 points higher (25.7 vs 9.3) but costs 5.5× as much to run the benchmark ($241 vs $44.0; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Inkling Small when you need intelligence above 9.3, and Llama 4 Maverick when 9.3 is enough.
| Metric | Inkling Small | Llama 4 Maverick | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 25.7 | 9.3 | −63.8% Llama 4 Maverick is 63.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $240.85 | $43.98 | −81.7% Llama 4 Maverick is 81.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.67s | 11.18s | −11.8% Llama 4 Maverick is 11.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $0.25 / $0.92 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech | Text, Image |
Llama 4 Maverick vs Inkling Small: 63.8% less intelligence, 81.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 11.8% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Inkling Small is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
- Llama 4 Maverick is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Inkling SmallLlama 4 MaverickToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/inkling-small/llama-4-maverick · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/inkling-small/llama-4-maverick?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill