Inkling Small vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Inkling Small by Thinking Machines or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Inkling Small
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Inkling Small: 56.4% less intelligence, 36.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 240.8% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Inkling Small | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 25.7 | 11.2 | −56.4% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 56.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $240.85 | $328.86 | +36.5% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 36.5% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.68s | 43.21s | +240.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 240.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech | Text, Image, Video |
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.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Inkling SmallQwen3.5 9B (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/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/inkling-small/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill