Inkling Small vs Palmyra X5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Can the open-source model replace the paid one? Full 2026 breakdown.
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
| Spec | Inkling Small | Palmyra X5 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | Thinkingmachines | Writer | – |
| Type | Open-weight | Proprietary | THInkling Small |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens | THInkling Small |
| Input price | $0.45/M · free self-host | $0.6/M | THInkling Small |
| Output price | $1.2/M · free self-host | $6/M | THInkling Small |
| Vision / multimodal | Yes | No | THInkling Small |
| Tool / function calling | Yes | No | THInkling Small |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No (API only) | THInkling Small |
| License | Open weights | Proprietary | THInkling Small |
Inkling Small is ~5.0× cheaper than Palmyra X5 on output tokens ($1.2 vs $6 per M tokens).
| Capability | Inkling Small | Palmyra X5 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✓ | ✗ |
| Runs fully offline | ✓ | ✗ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✓ | ✗ |
| Tool / function calling | ✓ | ✗ |
| 1M+ context window | ✓ | ✓ |
Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).
Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.
| Criterion | Inkling Small | Palmyra X5 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 4.5 | 4.0 |
| Context window | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Openness | 5.0 | 1.5 |
| Self-hosting | 5.0 | 1.0 |
| Multimodality | 5.0 | 2.0 |
Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.
Inkling Small is an open-weight multimodal mixture-of-experts model from Thinking Machines Lab, with 12B active parameters out of 276B total. It is positioned as the smaller, more efficient member of...
Palmyra X5 is Writer's most advanced model, purpose-built for building and scaling AI agents across the enterprise. It delivers industry-leading speed and efficiency on context windows up to 1 million...
These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.
Inkling Small is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Palmyra X5 may still lead on the hardest reasoning and agentic work. The gap keeps narrowing — benchmark both on your actual use case before deciding.
Yes. Inkling Small has open weights, so you can self-host it on your own GPUs or run it via a low-cost API. Palmyra X5 is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.
Inkling Small costs $1.2/M output vs $6/M for Palmyra X5 — roughly 5x cheaper via API, and free if you self-host.
Choose Inkling Small if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Palmyra X5 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.
Browse the full open-source model leaderboard, thousands of tools and live benchmarks — all in one place.
Open the leaderboard →