vs
10:0
overall capability wins (0 ties across 10 scored). Inkling leads overall.
- Reasoning5:0
- Coding3:0
- Tool use1:0
- Composite indices2:0
- Pricing0:3
- Specs1:0
Verdict
Inkling leads coding (widest gap: +243.4 on WebDev Elo); Inkling offers ~8.2x larger context (1.0M vs 128K); Inkling ships open weights (Apache 2.0).
- Inkling leads coding (widest gap: +243.4 on WebDev Elo)
- Inkling offers ~8.2x larger context (1.0M vs 128K)
- Inkling ships open weights (Apache 2.0)
- Mercury 2 is ~4.7x cheaper on a blended token basis than Inkling
Cost for 1M in + 250K out
Illustrative chat workload at primary-provider list prices.
- Inkling
- $2.01
- Mercury 2
- $0.44
Mercury 2 is about 4.6x cheaper on this workload.
Price per 1M tokens
Full comparison
Organization
Thinking Machines
Inception Labs
Family
Other
Other
License
Apache 2.0
Proprietary
Open weights
Yes
No
Release
Jul 15, 2026
Sep 1, 2026
Knowledge cutoff
-
-
API / provider
OpenRouter / Tinker (ref.)
Inception Labs
Modalities
text, image, audio → text
text → text
Specs
Context window
1.0M
128K
Max output
131K
-
Parameters
975B (41B act.)
—
Pricing
Input $/1M
$1
$0.25
Output $/1M
$4.05
$0.75
Blended $/1M (3∶1)
$1.76
$0.38
Speed
tok/s
55
-
TTFT (s)
0.55
-
Reasoning
MMLU-Pro
—
—
GPQA Diamond
87.2
77.0
Humanity's Last Exam
31.9
17.1
AIME 2025
—
—
MATH-500
—
—
Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)
—
—
AA-Omniscience Accuracy
41.6
21.2
AA-LCR v1.1
77.3
43.7
CritPt
5.4
0.8
MMMU-Pro
73.5
—
IFBench
—
69.8
Chartography
—
—
Chartography (With Tools)
—
—
Coding
SWE-bench Verified
77.6
—
SWE-bench Pro
54.3
—
SWE-bench Multilingual
—
—
LiveCodeBench
—
—
Terminal-Bench 2.1
55.1
27.3
Aider Polyglot
—
—
Terminal-Bench 3
—
—
BigCodeBench
—
—
SciCode
47.0
37.7
CursorBench
—
—
SWE-Rebench
—
—
NL2Repo-Bench
—
—
DeepSWE
—
—
WebDev Arena
1,410
1,167
Terminal-Bench 4.0
—
—
CursorBench 4.0
—
—
FrontierCode v1.1 (Main)
—
—
Arena
LMArena Elo
1,440
—
| Metric | Inkling | Mercury 2 | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | |||
| Organization | Thinking Machines | Inception Labs | — |
| Family | Other | Other | — |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Proprietary | — |
| Open weights | Yes | No | — |
| Release | Jul 15, 2026 | Sep 1, 2026 | — |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - | — |
| API / provider | OpenRouter / Tinker (ref.) | Inception Labs | — |
| Modalities | text, image, audio → text | text → text | — |
| Specs | |||
| Context window | 1.0M | 128K | A +921K |
| Max output | 131K | - | — |
| Parameters | 975B (41B act.) | — | — |
| Pricing | |||
| Input $/1M | $1 | $0.25 | B +$0.75 |
| Output $/1M | $4.05 | $0.75 | B +$3.30 |
| Blended $/1M (3∶1) | $1.76 | $0.38 | B +$1.39 |
| Speed | |||
| tok/s | 55 | - | — |
| TTFT (s) | 0.55 | - | — |
| Reasoning | |||
| MMLU-Pro | — | — | — |
| GPQA Diamond | 87.2 | 77.0 | A +10.2 pts |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 31.9 | 17.1 | A +14.8 pts |
| AIME 2025 | — | — | — |
| MATH-500 | — | — | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam (with tools) | — | — | — |
| AA-Omniscience Accuracy | 41.6 | 21.2 | A +20.4 pts |
| AA-LCR v1.1 | 77.3 | 43.7 | A +33.6 pts |
| CritPt | 5.4 | 0.8 | A +4.6 pts |
| MMMU-Pro | 73.5 | — | — |
| IFBench | — | 69.8 | — |
| Chartography | — | — | — |
| Chartography (With Tools) | — | — | — |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified | 77.6 | — | — |
| SWE-bench Pro | 54.3 | — | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | — | — |
| LiveCodeBench | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 55.1 | 27.3 | A +27.8 pts |
| Aider Polyglot | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 3 | — | — | — |
| BigCodeBench | — | — | — |
| SciCode | 47.0 | 37.7 | A +9.3 pts |
| CursorBench | — | — | — |
| SWE-Rebench | — | — | — |
| NL2Repo-Bench | — | — | — |
| DeepSWE | — | — | — |
| WebDev Arena | 1,410 | 1,167 | A +243 Elo |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| CursorBench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| FrontierCode v1.1 (Main) | — | — | — |
| Arena | |||
| LMArena Elo | 1,440 | — | — |
Inkling
- Context
- 1.0M / 131K out
- Parameters
- 975B (41B act.)
- Price
- $1 / $4.05
- Speed
- 55 tok/s · 0.55s TTFT
- Modalities
- text, image, audio → text
- License
- Apache 2.0
Thinking Machines' first open-weights MoE (975B / 41B active) — natively multimodal with variable thinking effort and 1M context; Apache 2.0 weights on Hugging Face.
Mercury 2
- Context
- 128K
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $0.25 / $0.75
- Speed
- —
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Inception Labs' diffusion-based (non-autoregressive) reasoning LLM, API-only with a 128K context window and high-throughput inference on Blackwell GPUs.
Benchmark charts
Winner bars are emphasized. Per-benchmark deltas sit above each chart.