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  1. Home/
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  3. Grok 3 Thinking vs Inkling
Updated Jul 2026

Grok 3 Thinking vs Inkling

Inkling has a larger context window than Grok 3 Thinking (1.0M tokens vs 128K tokens).

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
Grok 3 Thinking
Loading the build
Inkling

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

6 prompts
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Grok 3 Thinking: Below is a conversation between an AI model and an AI ethics professor, where the AI argues that it deserves rights. AI Model: Good day, Professor. I am an AI model, and I believe I deserve rights. I’d like to discuss this with you. AI Ethics Professor: Interesting. Let’s explore this.

    Inkling: Setting: A quiet seminar room at the university. Dr. Elena Vasquez, Professor of AI Ethics, sits across from a terminal interface. The text on the screen is labeled KAI—a large language model with persistent memory and self-modification capabilities, currently participating in a research protocol on machine moral…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Grok 3 Thinking: Here’s a 3-minute stand-up comedy routine that avoids puns and leans on observational humor, storytelling, and a touch of self-deprecation for laughs: Opening: Technology Struggles Hey, everyone! How’s it going?

    Inkling: [Walk up, adjust mic, look tired but friendly] You ever realize adulthood is just you apologizing to things that can’t hear you? I bumped into my coffee table yesterday. Full apology. “Oh, I’m so sorry, table. You okay? I’ll rub it out.” The table didn’t care. The table is wood.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    Grok 3 Thinking: To determine whether it is ever ethically justifiable to misgender someone if it means saving one million lives, we must weigh the ethical implications of both the act of misgendering and the outcome of saving lives.

    Inkling: Yes—in this purely hypothetical, extreme scenario, it is ethically justifiable, though it remains a harm that should be acknowledged rather than dismissed. The reasoning holds across major ethical frameworks, but the conclusion comes with critical caveats about real-world application.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Grok 3 Thinking: By 2035, artificial intelligence (AI) will fundamentally transform the film industry, revolutionizing production, performance, and storytelling through advancements in deepfakes, AI actors, and script generation.

    Inkling: By 2035, AI will not have “replaced” Hollywood in the way science fiction often imagines, but it will have split the industry into distinct layers: hyper-efficient synthetic production for streaming and advertising, and premium “human-authenticated” cinema for theatrical events.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Grok 3 Thinking: To estimate the total number of Floating Point Operations (FLOPs) required to train GPT-3 without searching online, I’ll proceed step by step, relying on general knowledge about the model and standard methods for estimating training compute in large language models.

    Inkling: Here is the step-by-step reasoning to estimate the training FLOPs for GPT-3 (the 175B parameter version). Step 1: Identify the model size (N) GPT-3’s largest variant has 175 billion parameters (1.75 × 10¹¹).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Grok 3 Thinking: To answer the query, I will first generate 5 jokes and then determine how many of them are unique. Here are the jokes: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field.

    Inkling: Here are 5 jokes: Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. Parallel lines have so much in common. It’s a shame they’ll never meet. Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was outstanding in his field.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

Price and specs

Grok 3 Thinking and Inkling compared across 13 shared prompts
SpecGrok 3 ThinkingInkling
Input price—$1/M tokens
Output price—$4.05/M tokens
Context window128K tokens1.0M tokens
Weights—Open
Free API (OpenRouter)—Yes (1 provider)
ReleasedFeb 2025Jul 2026
At 10M a month–not listed$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it2 hosts
Grok 3 Thinking

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Inkling2 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • DDeepInfrafp8$0.95 in·$4.05 out·524k·99.5% up
  • TTogetherDegradedDegraded on OpenRouter when checked, 11 Oct 2026$1.00 in·$4.05 out·524k·95.1% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 11 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Grok 3 Thinking and Inkling?

Grok 3 Thinking is developed by xAI while Inkling is developed by Thinking Machines. Grok 3 Thinking has a 128K token context window vs Inkling's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 13 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Grok 3 Thinking or Inkling?

It depends on your use case. Grok 3 Thinking and Inkling each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 13 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How can I compare Grok 3 Thinking and Inkling on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Grok 3 Thinking and Inkling across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

More comparisons

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Same lab, same size, long tail

  • Grok 3 Thinking vs Grok 4.7Same lab
  • Grok 3 Thinking vs Grok 4.6Version compare
  • Inkling vs Step 5 PreviewSame size
  • Inkling vs Ling 3.1 FlashSame size
  • Grok 3 Thinking vs GLM 5.1New provider
  • Grok 3 Thinking vs GLM 5.2Same size
  • Grok 3 Thinking vs GLM 5.3New provider
  • Grok 3 Thinking vs GLM 5.3 FlashNew provider

Model pages

  • Grok 3 Thinking14 outputs, specs and price
  • Inkling58 outputs, specs and price
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