Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Inkling Small | Solar Pro 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.3 | $0.3 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $1.2 | $1.2 |
Verdict. Inkling Small and Solar Pro 4 split the benchmark comparison evenly at 1–1. The tiebreaker here is price, speed, and what you actually run them on.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Solar Pro 4 is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Solar Pro 4 makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Inkling Small is strongest on Coding Index (52.9), Intelligence Index (41.2). Solar Pro 4 leads on Coding Index (52.7), Intelligence Index (41.6).
Speed. On throughput, Inkling Small generates tokens at 107 tok/s versus 78 tok/s — about 27% faster. On time-to-first-token, Solar Pro 4 responds in 1950ms vs 2710ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.
Provider. Thinking Machines and Upstage sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Thinking Machines tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Upstage often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Inkling Small costs $27.00 ($324/year); Solar Pro 4 costs $27.00 ($324/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Inkling Small ≈ $3.90/run, Solar Pro 4 ≈ $3.90/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Inkling Small ≈ $180/run, Solar Pro 4 ≈ $180/run.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Both models have similar pricing. Check the detailed breakdown above for input vs output token costs.
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Inkling Small generates tokens faster at 107 tok/s vs 78 tok/s. However, Solar Pro 4 has lower time-to-first-token (1.95s vs 2.71s).
Choose based on your priorities: both are similarly priced, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and Inkling Small for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.