Inkling API Pricing & Cost Calculator
Inkling is the wild-card workhorse for buyers wanting an alternative to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the Chinese labs. Pricing is competitive for high-volume document work with a real 1M context.
Inkling is Thinking Machines Lab's flagship model and their first broadly available API release. It positions at workhorse pricing alongside GPT-5.6 Terra, with a 1-million-token context for agentic workloads.
By TechCompare · Updated
Calculator
Cost Comparison
Based on 50,000 input tokens (50% cached), 3,000 output tokens, and 500 requests.Prices are fetched live from OpenRouter and may include temporary promotional discounts not accounted for in our article and comparison figures.
How this is calculated
Inkling is priced at $1.00 per million input tokens and $4.05 per million output tokens, with an 83% prompt caching discount ($0.17 per million cached reads). That is half of GPT-5.6 Terra's input list rate ($2.00) while sitting just below GLM-5.2 ($4.40) and well below Terra on output.
Verdict
Inkling's $1/M input and $4.05/M output sit at half of GPT-5.6 Terra's $2 input rate, with cached input at $0.17/M (83% discount). Output at $4.05/M undercuts GLM-5.2's $4.40 and Gemini 3.6 Flash's $7.50, so the per-call cost stacks Inkling in the same output-tail band as the GLM and MiniMax workhorses. The 1M context window fits the same document-heavy bill as those peers, and the value case for buyers locked out of the OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/Chinese-lab stack is a competitively-priced workhorse that doesn't require sacrificing the per-token cost math the mainstream options deliver.
More API Standalones scenarios
Related guides
Frequently asked questions
Who is Thinking Machines Lab and why is Inkling notable?
How much does Inkling cost per million output tokens?
Related tools
LLM VRAM Calculator
Calculate the VRAM needed to run or fine-tune any LLM at any quantization.
Use tool ➜Power Cost Estimator
Estimate annual electricity costs for your PC, Server, or TV.
Use tool ➜Data Transfer Calculator
Estimate transfer times for files over USB, WiFi, Ethernet, and more.
Use tool ➜JSON Formatter
Validate, format, and minify JSON data with readable output and error detection.
Use tool ➜