# DeepSeek V4 vs Inkling

On provider list prices, DeepSeek V4 costs $1.74 per million input tokens against $1.87 for Inkling: 1.1x apart. Output is $3.48 against $4.68 (1.3x). On Allocate both bill at list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## Specifications

| | DeepSeek V4 | Inkling |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lab | Deepseek | Thinking Machines |
| Access | API only | Open weights |
| Context window | 512K tokens | 1M tokens |
| List price, input | $1.74 / M tokens | $1.87 / M tokens |
| List price, output | $3.48 / M tokens | $4.68 / M tokens |
| Cached input | $0.20 / M tokens | $0.37 / M tokens |
| License | Proprietary API | Apache 2.0 |
| Fine-tunable | No | Yes |

Specifications and provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-08. Billed price is list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## What the numbers say

Take 1,000,000 requests a month at 1,200 input and 350 output tokens each. That workload costs $3,306 a month on DeepSeek V4 and $3,882 on Inkling at list: a gap of $576, or 1.2x.

Inkling reads 1M tokens per request against 512K for DeepSeek V4, 2.0x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.

## Choose DeepSeek V4 for

- Reasoning-heavy agents
- Long-document analysis
- Cost-sensitive production routes

## Choose Inkling for

- The longer context window (1M vs 512K tokens)
- Open weights you can fine-tune and own
- Fine-tuning under a permissive license (Apache 2.0)

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, DeepSeek V4 or Inkling?

DeepSeek V4, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $1.74/$3.48 per million tokens in and out against $1.87/$4.68 for Inkling. Billed on Allocate: $1.86/$3.72 against $2.00/$5.01, list plus 7%.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Inkling: 1,000,000 tokens (1M) against 512,000 (512K) for DeepSeek V4.

### Can I fine-tune DeepSeek V4 or Inkling?

Inkling publishes open weights (Apache 2.0) and can be fine-tuned on your own data. DeepSeek V4 is a closed model served over API; its weights are not available.

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[HTML page](https://allocate.network/compare/deepseek-v4-vs-thinkingmachines-inkling) · [DeepSeek V4](https://allocate.network/models/deepseek-v4.md) · [Inkling](https://allocate.network/models/thinkingmachines-inkling.md) · [Machine-readable catalog](https://allocate.network/catalog.json)