Z.ai: GLM Flash Latest vs Thinking Machines: Inkling
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-19.
| Z.ai: GLM Flash Latest | Thinking Machines: Inkling | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | ~z-ai | thinkingmachines |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | - | 37.2 |
| Input Price | $0.05/M | $1.00/M |
| Output Price | $0.20/M | $4.05/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 524,288 |
| Max Output | 943,718 | 471,859 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | - |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | ✓ |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | - | 41.2 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, GLM Flash Latest costs $0.098 and Inkling costs $2.01, so GLM Flash Latest is about 20.5 times cheaper for the same work.
GLM Flash Latest reads up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text, against about 786 pages for Inkling.
Only GLM Flash Latest offers structured output and video input; only Inkling offers audio input.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, GLM Flash Latest scores higher on 9 (SQL Generation, Code Completion, Unit Test Generation and others), Inkling on 11 (Code Review, Code Refactoring, Bug Fixing and others).
GLM Flash Latest was released in August 2026 and Inkling in July 2026.
Pick GLM Flash Latest if you need lower cost, long documents, structured output or video input; pick Inkling 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 Flash Latest | Thinking Machines: Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 134 | 130 |
| Code Review | 132 | 135 |
| Code Completion | 132 | 119 |
| Code Refactoring | 136 | 138 |
| Bug Fixing | 136 | 143 |
| Unit Test Generation | 124 | 120 |
| Code Documentation | 132 | 134 |
| Regex Writing | 120 | 123 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 120 | 120 |
| Frontend Component Design | 122 | 122 |
| Data Analysis | 124 | 126 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 134 | 123 |
| ETL Scripting | 128 | 129 |
| JSON Extraction | 132 | 111 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 129 | 116 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 131 | 125 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 131 | 125 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 138 | 144 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 124 | 117 |
| Blog Post Writing | 122 | 126 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →