Z.ai: GLM 5.3 FlashX vs Thinking Machines: Inkling Small
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-07.
| Z.ai: GLM 5.3 FlashX | Thinking Machines: Inkling Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | z-ai | thinkingmachines |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Input Price | $0.37/M | $0.45/M |
| Output Price | $1.25/M | $1.20/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 524,288 |
| Max Output | 131,072 | 262,144 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | - |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | ✓ |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, GLM 5.3 FlashX costs $0.68 and Inkling Small costs $0.75, so GLM 5.3 FlashX is slightly cheaper for the same work.
GLM 5.3 FlashX reads up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text, against about 786 pages for Inkling Small.
Only GLM 5.3 FlashX offers structured output and video input; only Inkling Small offers audio input.
Across the 13 tasks where they differ, GLM 5.3 FlashX scores higher on 13 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Refactoring and others).
GLM 5.3 FlashX was released in September 2026 and Inkling Small in July 2026.
Pick GLM 5.3 FlashX if you need lower cost, long documents, structured output, video input or the stronger all-round task scores; pick Inkling Small if you need audio input.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Z.ai: GLM 5.3 FlashX | Thinking Machines: Inkling Small |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 133 | 125 |
| Code Review | 132 | 128 |
| Code Refactoring | 136 | 132 |
| Unit Test Generation | 124 | 116 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 120 | 116 |
| Frontend Component Design | 122 | 118 |
| Data Analysis | 124 | 120 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 133 | 121 |
| ETL Scripting | 128 | 124 |
| JSON Extraction | 131 | 119 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 129 | 125 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 131 | 123 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 131 | 123 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →