Thinking Machines: Inkling Small vs StepFun: Step 5 Preview: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing Thinking Machines: Inkling Small (thinkingmachines/inkling-small) vs StepFun: Step 5 Preview (stepfun/step-5-preview). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
Thinking Machines: Inkling Small (thinkingmachines/inkling-small) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Thinking Machines: Inkling Small: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.225/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
StepFun: Step 5 Preview (stepfun/step-5-preview) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for StepFun: Step 5 Preview: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.5/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing Thinking Machines: Inkling Small (API ID: thinkingmachines/inkling-small) vs StepFun: Step 5 Preview (API ID: stepfun/step-5-preview), Thinking Machines: Inkling Small offers lower standard input pricing at $0.45/1M tokens ($1.2/1M output), while Thinking Machines: Inkling Small leads in cached prefix economics at $0.225/1M tokens (50% discount). Thinking Machines: Inkling Small achieves a 0ms faster P90 time-to-first-token latency (280ms vs 280ms).
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
| Specification / FinOps Dimension | Thinking Machines: Inkling Small | StepFun: Step 5 Preview | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | thinkingmachines/inkling-small | stepfun/step-5-preview | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0.45 / $1.2 | $1 / $2.7 | Thinking Machines: Inkling Small |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0.225/1M (50% Off) | $0.5/1M (50% Off) | Thinking Machines: Inkling Small |
| Context Window / Max Output | 512K In / 256K Out | 1024K In / 63K Out | Thinking Machines: Inkling Small |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 280ms | Thinking Machines: Inkling Small (-0ms) |
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
Step 5 Preview is StepFun's flagship model for agentic work, built on a sparse Mixture-of-Experts architecture (27B active / 600B total parameters). It performs strongly in softwar
Real-Time Stack Cost & Hidden-Fee Simulator (MAU / Token / Egress / GMV)
Calibrated with Reddit r/FinOps & r/devops telemetry: Includes Context Caching, Bandwidth Egress, and MoR Tax
🛰️Switch from Thinking Machines: Inkling Small to StepFun: Step 5 Preview
Step 5 Preview is StepFun's flagship model for agentic work, built on a sparse Mixture-of-Experts architecture (27B active / 600B total parameters). It performs strongly in softwar Verified P90 latency of 280ms.