Inkling Small vs Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Inkling Small by Thinking Machines or Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Inkling Small
Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) vs Inkling Small: 21.4% less intelligence, 739.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 8.9% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Inkling Small | Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 25.7 | 20.2 | −21.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 21.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $240.85 | $2,022.49 | +739.7% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 8.4× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.81s | 13.95s | +8.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 8.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Inkling SmallQwen3.8 27B (Non-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/qwen3-8-27b-non-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/inkling-small/qwen3-8-27b-non-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill