# Inkling vs GLM 5.2

On provider list prices, GLM 5.2 costs $1.40 per million input tokens against $1.87 for Inkling: 1.3x apart. Output is $4.40 against $4.68 (1.1x). On Allocate both bill at list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## Specifications

| | Inkling | GLM 5.2 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lab | Thinking Machines | Zai Org |
| Access | Open weights | Open weights |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 256K tokens |
| List price, input | $1.87 / M tokens | $1.40 / M tokens |
| List price, output | $4.68 / M tokens | $4.40 / M tokens |
| Cached input | $0.37 / M tokens | $0.26 / M tokens |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Not listed |
| Fine-tunable | Yes | 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 $3,220 a month on GLM 5.2 and $3,882 on Inkling at list: a gap of $662, or 1.2x.

Inkling reads 1M tokens per request against 256K for GLM 5.2, 3.8x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.

## Choose Inkling for

- The longer context window (1M vs 256K tokens)
- Fine-tuning under a permissive license (Apache 2.0)

## Choose GLM 5.2 for

- Agents on open weights
- Code and structured outputs
- Fine-tuning toward an owned model

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, Inkling or GLM 5.2?

GLM 5.2, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $1.40/$4.40 per million tokens in and out against $1.87/$4.68 for Inkling. Billed on Allocate: $1.50/$4.71 against $2.00/$5.01, list plus 7%.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Inkling: 1,000,000 tokens (1M) against 262,144 (256K) for GLM 5.2.

### Can I fine-tune Inkling or GLM 5.2?

Both publish open weights (Inkling: Apache 2.0; GLM 5.2: Not listed), so both can be fine-tuned. On Allocate the trained weights stay inside your boundary and belong to you.

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[HTML page](https://allocate.network/compare/thinkingmachines-inkling-vs-z-ai-glm-5-2) · [Inkling](https://allocate.network/models/thinkingmachines-inkling.md) · [GLM 5.2](https://allocate.network/models/z-ai-glm-5-2.md) · [Machine-readable catalog](https://allocate.network/catalog.json)