MiniMax M3 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 M3 is 1.2× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- MiniMax M3 accepts longer prompts: 1M vs 524K tokens.
- Inkling Small is the newer model (released 2026-07-30).
| MiniMax M3 | Inkling Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | MiniMax | Thinking Machines |
| Released | 2026-05-31 | 2026-07-30 |
| Input / 1M | $0.30 | $0.45 |
| Output / 1M | $1.20 | $1.20 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.06 | $0.10 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.525 | $0.637 |
| Context | 1M | 524K |
| Max output | 512K | 262K |
| Accepts | text, image, video | text, image, audio |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 13 | 1 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $0.96 | $1.20 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | — | — |
Cost calculator
MiniMax M3
$36.00 per month$1.20 per day
Inkling Small
$45.00 per month$1.50 per day
MiniMax M3 saves $9.00 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
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