Inkling Small vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Inkling Small by Thinking Machines or Qwen3 Coder Next 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 Coder Next vs Inkling Small: 64.2% less intelligence, 68.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 52.0% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Inkling Small | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 25.7 | 9.2 | −64.2% Qwen3 Coder Next is 64.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $240.85 | $405.10 | +68.2% Qwen3 Coder Next is 68.2% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.95s | 6.21s | −52.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 52.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $0.31 / $1.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech | Text |
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 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Inkling SmallQwen3 Coder NextToday'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-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/inkling-small/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill