Inkling Small vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Inkling Small by Thinking Machines or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Inkling Small scores 16.8 points higher (25.7 vs 8.9) but costs 3.8× as much to run the benchmark ($241 vs $63.7; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Inkling Small when you need intelligence above 8.9, and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoni… when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | Inkling Small | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 25.7 | 8.9 | −65.4% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 65.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $240.85 | $63.74 | −73.5% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 73.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.75s | 10.12s | −20.6% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 20.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $0.05 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech | Text |
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) vs Inkling Small: 65.4% less intelligence, 73.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 20.6% 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.
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 34.50 for $56.4.
Inkling SmallNVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)Today'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/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/inkling-small/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill