Inkling Small vs Qwen3.7 Max
Which is better for the money: Inkling Small by Thinking Machines or Qwen3.7 Max by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.7 Max scores 3.8 points higher (29.5 vs 25.7) but costs 9.5× as much to run the benchmark ($2277 vs $241; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.7 Max when you need intelligence above 25.7, and Inkling Small when 25.7 is enough.
| Metric | Inkling Small | Qwen3.7 Max | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 25.7 | 29.5 | +14.8% Qwen3.7 Max is 14.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $240.85 | $2,277.12 | +845.5% Qwen3.7 Max is 9.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.68s | 16.57s | +30.7% Qwen3.7 Max is 30.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $2.50 / $7.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech | Text |
Qwen3.7 Max vs Inkling Small: 14.8% more intelligence, 845.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 30.7% slower 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.
- Qwen3.7 Max is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Inkling SmallQwen3.7 MaxToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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