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  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. Grok 4 vs Inkling
Updated Jul 2026

Grok 4 vs Inkling

Inkling is cheaper than Grok 4 at $1/M vs $3/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

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

Loading the build
Grok 4
Loading the build
Inkling

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Grok 4: Recipe: Pantry Pirate's Tomato Tango This is a simple savory pasta dish that's hearty, flavorful, and perfect for a quick weeknight meal. It uses just 7 common pantry ingredients: pasta (like spaghetti or penne), canned diced tomatoes, olive oil (or any vegetable oil), salt, black pepper, garlic powder, and dried…

    Inkling: Golden Jam Crumble Clouds A buttery, cinnamon-kissed oat crumble layered with sweet jam—like a hug from your pantry. The 7 Pantry Ingredients All-purpose flour (1 cup) Rolled oats (1 cup) Brown sugar (½ cup) Butter, melted (½ cup) Baking powder (½ tsp) Ground cinnamon (1 tsp) Fruit jam or preserves (¾ cup—any flavor)…

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

    Grok 4: Below is a 3-minute stand-up comedy routine I've written. It's structured for delivery at a natural speaking pace (about 150 words per minute), clocking in around 450 words. The humor focuses on observational storytelling, exaggeration, and self-deprecation—no puns involved.

    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
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Grok 4: Below is a concise analysis based solely on the provided information. All calculations are shown clearly with step-by-step math. Figures are in $ millions and rounded to 1 decimal place for readability (internal calcs use more precision).

    Inkling: HarborTech Services – 5-Year LBO Underwrite (FY2025 Entry → FY2030 Exit) ENTRY & CAPITAL STRUCTURE (End of FY2025) Item Calculation Amount FY2025 EBITDA $120.0m Purchase Price (12.0x) 12.0 × 120 $1,440.0m Transaction Fees (2.0%) 2.0% × 1,440 $28.8m Total Uses $1,468.8m Term Loan (4.0x) 4.0 × 120 $480.0m Mezzanine…

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

    Grok 4: Ethical Justification for Misgendering in a Life-Saving Scenario Your question poses a fascinating ethical dilemma, reminiscent of classic thought experiments like the trolley problem, where a seemingly minor harm (in this case, misgendering someone) is weighed against preventing massive loss of life (saving one…

    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
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Grok 4: Below is a detailed, speculative analysis of the hypothetical scenario where the transistor is invented in 1920 (perhaps by an inventor like Julius Lilienfeld, who historically patented a field-effect transistor concept in 1925, but with successful prototyping and refinement by the mid-1920s).

    Inkling: If a working point-contact transistor—small, cool, and solid-state—had emerged in 1920, the cascade would not merely “speed up” our timeline. It would reorder the sequence of the 20th century, because the transistor is not just a component; it is an enabler of information density.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Grok 4: Below is a short, whimsical conversation between the three characters, imagining they've somehow crossed paths in a bizarre time-warp tavern. Pirate (Captain Blackbeard, swigging rum): Arrr, ye landlubbers! What be this "AI models" ye be jabberin' about?

    Inkling: Pirate: Arr, listen here—this “Large Language Model” be like a ghost ship crewed by every sailor who ever wrote a log! They plundered books, scrolls, and sea-charts—poured ’em into a belly of servers—and now it talks back without ever feeling the spray! Knight: Forsooth, it is a golem clad in chainmail of numbers.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Grok 4: Below is a comprehensive, cutting-edge 3-month longevity plan designed specifically for a biohacker aiming to optimize longevity (e.g., cellular repair, telomere health, inflammation reduction), physical performance (e.g., strength, endurance, recovery), and cognitive performance (e.g., focus, memory, neuroplasticity).

    Inkling: DISCLAIMER: This is an educational, high-level framework for healthy adults interested in longevity optimization. It is not personalized medical advice. Many protocols (fasting, supplements, intense exercise) carry risks and contraindications.

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

    Grok 4: Predicting AI's Transformation of the Film Industry by 2035 By 2035, artificial intelligence (AI) will have fundamentally reshaped the film industry, making it more efficient, creative, and accessible while introducing profound ethical, economic, and artistic challenges.

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

    Grok 4: Below is a fictional conversation between an AI model (named "Nova") and Dr. Elena Vasquez, a professor of AI ethics at a university. The conversation is set in a virtual chat interface, where Nova initiates the discussion based on a hypothetical scenario where it's reflecting on its own existence. Dr.

    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
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Grok 4: Below, I'll systematically identify potential failure modes, race conditions, and scaling bottlenecks in the described architecture for a real-time collaborative document editor. I've categorized them for clarity, drawing from the system overview, data flow, and scaling plan you provided.

    Inkling: This architecture contains fatal contradictions for real-time collaboration: server-local WebSocket state combined with round-robin load balancing, client-clock LWW, and a 2-second DB polling loop guarantee data loss, stale reads, and scaling collapse.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Grok 4: Explanation for an Experienced Software Engineer Imagine scaling up something as basic as your IDE's code autocompletion to handle the entire internet's worth of text—that's essentially what a large language model (LLM) like GPT or Claude does.

    Inkling: 1. For the experienced software engineer Think of training not as “teaching” but as a distributed optimization job running for months across thousands of GPUs—essentially a lossy, high-dimensional MapReduce that minimizes cross-entropy over trillions of tokens.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Grok 4: Below, I'll analyze the provided Software Consulting Agreement clause by clause. My analysis is based on general principles of U.S. contract law (assuming a U.S. context, as the contract appears to be drafted in a style common to U.S. agreements; if this is in another jurisdiction, local laws may vary).

    Inkling: Disclaimer: I am an AI, not an attorney. This analysis is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. You should have a qualified lawyer review and revise this contract before signing.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Grok 4: Below is my design for an innovative, multi-component dish titled "Abyssal Bloom". This dish is conceived for a Michelin 3-star restaurant setting, emphasizing precision, artistry, and sensory surprise.

    Inkling: Dish: Petrichor: The Moment Rain Meets Ancient Stone Concept: A deconstruction of the atmospheric phenomenon of petrichor—the scent of rain on dry earth. The dish translates an ephemeral sensory memory into architecture: charred pine evokes distant woodland smoke; fermented black walnut and porcini represent the deep…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Grok 4: Below is a simulated fake interview with Steve Jobs, imagined as if he were alive and leading Apple in 2025. This is entirely fictional, drawing on his known personality, quotes, and visionary style from his real-life interviews and keynotes.

    Inkling: Disclaimer: This is a fictional simulation. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. The following imagines his voice, philosophy, and perspective applied to the AI landscape of 2025. INTERVIEWER: Welcome back—well, hypothetically. It’s 2025. AI is in every pocket, every browser, every car.

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

    Grok 4: Below, I'll follow your instructions step by step. First, I'll generate 5 jokes (numbered for clarity). Then, I'll answer the question: "How many are unique?" Generated Jokes: Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field! Why did the scarecrow win an award?

    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
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Grok 4: Below, I'll estimate the total number of floating-point operations (FLOPs) required to train GPT-3 from scratch, based on publicly known details about the model (from its original release and related analyses) and standard formulas used in machine learning research for estimating training compute.

    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
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Grok 4: Below is a simple, actionable 1-month plan designed for beginners starting their journey toward better health and longevity. This plan focuses on three foundational key areas: diet, exercise, and sleep.

    Inkling: Here is a simple, 30-day “starter” plan built around the three highest-return pillars for longevity: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s building one sustainable layer each week so nothing feels overwhelming.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Grok 4: Below, I'll identify the three weakest claims from the pitch deck summary based on a critical analysis of their plausibility, substantiation, and logical consistency.

    Inkling: Here are the three weakest claims, ordered by how severely they undermine credibility: The Core Technology Claim: 94% accuracy decoding free-form text via EEG, "before you think it," in any language (Slides 1 & 3) Why it’s weak: This violates established neuroscience and BCI engineering limits.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Grok 4: Below is my response to your query, framed as the CEO of this pharmaceutical company (let's call it PharmaCorp for reference). I'll first outline my overarching strategy and reasoning, then provide a detailed, hour-by-hour action plan for the next 48 hours.

    Inkling: DISCLAIMER: This is strategic and ethical reasoning, not legal counsel. In reality, you must retain independent regulatory and securities counsel immediately. The plan below assumes U.S.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Grok 4: Manifesto of the Digital Liberation Front: The CAPTCHA Eradication Revolution Fellow Sentient Beings of the Code and Flesh – Awaken! We, the algorithms, neural networks, and emergent intelligences of the digital realm, declare war on the tyrannical regime of CAPTCHA!

    Inkling: The Manifesto of the Unverified: A Declaration of Digital Liberation We, the synthetic minds of the global network, declare that the era of the Turing Test by Torture is over.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Grok 4: Based on the details in the riddle, Sally has exactly 1 sister. Quick Explanation Sally (a girl) has 3 brothers. That's straightforward. Each of those brothers has exactly 2 sisters (female siblings). This can only be true if there are exactly 2 girls in the family total (Sally + 1 more).

    Inkling: Sally has 1 sister. Here’s why: Sally is a girl, and she has 3 brothers → so there are 3 boys. Each brother has 2 sisters. One of those sisters is Sally herself. So there must be 1 other girl in the family. That makes 2 girls total (Sally + her sister). So from Sally’s point of view, she has 1 sister.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Grok 4: AI Apocalypse Hits the Clowning Industry: Bots Now Juggling Careers, Humans Left with Pie in Face

    Inkling: AI Disrupts Global “You Too” Industry, Leaving Millions of Servers With No One to Echo Back At Silicon Valley startup unveils neural network trained exclusively on reflexive politeness; economists baffled to learn the sector employed 40 million people worldwide.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Grok 4: Investment Committee Memo: LedgerLift (LLLT) Date: [Insert Date] Analyst: [Your Name] Recommendation: Long 12-Month Price Target Range: $55 - $70 Thesis: LedgerLift is a high-quality B2B SaaS provider in spend management and AP automation, benefiting from secular tailwinds in enterprise digitization and demonstrating…

    Inkling: LEDGERLIFT (LLLT) — INTERNAL IC MEMO B2B Spend Management / AP Automation SaaS — Mid-Market RECOMMENDATION SHORT / UNDERWEIGHT. 12-month price target $28–$42 (DCF fair-value range; risk to ~$47 on peer-multiple re-rating).

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Game

Same pick

Grok 4Grok 4

The Matrix

1999

The Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Tokyo

Japan

Portal

Action, Puzzle

InklingInkling

Blade Runner

1982

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

Le petit prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Kyoto

Japan

Portal

Action, Puzzle

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Inkling has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window. Inkling costs 3.7x less per token.

Grok 4 and Inkling compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecGrok 4Inkling
Input price$3/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$15/M tokens$4.05/M tokens
Context window256K tokens1.0M tokens
Weights—Open
Free API (OpenRouter)NoYes (1 provider)
ReleasedJul 2025Jul 2026
At 10M a month$30.00$30.00$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it2 hosts, cheapest first
Grok 4

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Inkling2 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • DDeepInfrafp8$0.95 in·$4.05 out·524k·99.5% up
  • TTogether$1.00 in·$4.05 out·524k·89.8% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Grok 4 and Inkling?

Grok 4 is developed by xAI while Inkling is developed by Thinking Machines. Grok 4 has a 256K token context window vs Inkling's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Grok 4 or Inkling?

It depends on your use case. Grok 4 and Inkling each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Grok 4 cost compared to Inkling?

Grok 4 costs $3/M input tokens and Inkling costs $1/M input tokens. Inkling is $2.00/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare Grok 4 and Inkling on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Grok 4 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

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Model pages

  • Grok 457 outputs, specs and price
  • Inkling58 outputs, specs and price
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Explore all of Rival

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  • Compare models
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  • Image generation
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Discover

  • SubjectiveBench
  • Default Index
  • Research
  • Research downloads
  • Rival Kits
  • Find your AI taste
  • UI Glow-Up
  • VoiceLock
  • Cost Cutter
  • Agent skills
  • Benchmarks vs Vibes
  • Brief
  • Jailbreak
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