MiniMax M2.1 vs Thinking Machines Inkling Small
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- MiniMax M2.1 is 1.2× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- Inkling Small accepts longer prompts: 524K vs 205K tokens.
- Inkling Small is the newer model (released 2026-07-30).
| MiniMax M2.1 | Inkling Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | MiniMax | Thinking Machines |
| Released | 2025-12-23 | 2026-07-30 |
| Input / 1M | $0.30 | $0.45 |
| Output / 1M | $1.20 | $1.20 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.03 | $0.10 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.525 | $0.637 |
| Context | 205K | 524K |
| Max output | 131K | 262K |
| Accepts | text | text, image, audio |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 2 | 1 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $1.20 | $1.20 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | — | — |
Cost calculator
MiniMax M2.1
$36.00 per month$1.20 per day
Inkling Small
$45.00 per month$1.50 per day
MiniMax M2.1 saves $9.00 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare MiniMax M2.1 with