Mercury 2.5 vs Mercury 2
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
Mercury 2.5 is 10% cheaper on blended cost ($0.338 vs $0.375/Mtok)
| Specification |
Mercury 2.5Intro price
by Inception
|
by Inception
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current budget | Current budget |
| Released | ||
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $0.200/Mtok | $0.250/Mtok |
| Output | $0.750/Mtok | $0.750/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $0.338/Mtok | $0.375/Mtok |
| Cached input | $0.020/Mtok | $0.025/Mtok |
| Price basis | These are Inception's LIST prices, per 1M tokens. Mercury 2.5 is currently on an 80%-off promotion, so the rate you actually pay today is $0.04 input / $0.15 output / $0.004 cached input. Inception has not published an end date for the promotion, so we track the list price — the rate the model reverts to — rather than a discounted number that could expire without notice. Inception's own rate card shows both, listing Mercury 2.5 at $0.20 input / $0.02 cached / $0.75 output struck through, alongside the discounted prices. Inception's launch announcement states the same standard pricing of $0.20 / $0.75 per 1M tokens and describes $0.04 / $0.15 as a launch discount. Verified 2026-09-08. | Inception publishes this rate per TOKEN, not per 1M: its own API root (api.inceptionlabs.ai/v1/models) serves prompt 0.00000025 and completion 0.00000075, which is $0.25 / $0.75 per 1M tokens, with cache reads at 0.000000025 ($0.025 per 1M) and cache writes free. Read unauthenticated on 2026-09-01 and again on 2026-09-02, byte-identical both times (973 bytes, md5 a835588b3e712d66d80ab0166a1b8fba). The vendor's own record carries "openrouter": {"slug": "inception/mercury-2"}, so the join to the gateway id is Inception's claim rather than ours. Inception's HTML pricing page is behind a standing bot challenge and is not our source. |
| Specifications | ||
| Context window | 260K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Parameters | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Speed (TPS) | — | — |
| Modalities | ||
| Input |
text
|
text
|
| Benchmarks sources: public leaderboards / Artificial Analysis | ||
| Independent composite scores each on its own scale — not part of the average above | ||
| AA Intelligence Index | — | 11.5 |
| AA Agentic Index | — | 4 |
| AA-Omniscience Index (−100–100) | — | -50.7 |
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
Inception — $0.200/$0.750/Mtok
|
Inception — $0.250/$0.750/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | Mercury 2.5 | Mercury 2 | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $0.34 | $0.38 | $0.04 (10.7%) |
| 10M tokens | $3.38 | $3.75 | $0.38 (10.1%) |
| 100M tokens | $33.75 | $37.5 | $3.75 (10%) |
| 1000M tokens | $337.5 | $375 | $37.5 (10%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above
Pick Mercury 2.5 if…
- cost dominates: $0.338/Mtok blended vs $0.375 — 10% less on the same 50/50 token mix
- you need the longer context: 260K tokens vs 128K (2×)
Pick Mercury 2 if…
- this pairing gives Mercury 2 no edge on price, context, cache discount, or measured performance — pick it only for qualitative fit (ecosystem, compliance, model behavior on your prompts)
Summary
Mercury 2.5 by Inception costs $0.200/Mtok input and $0.750/Mtok output, with a 260K-token context window. It supports text input.
Mercury 2 by Inception costs $0.250/Mtok input and $0.750/Mtok output, with a 128K-token context window. It supports text input.
On a blended cost basis, Mercury 2.5 is 10% cheaper than Mercury 2.It also has a larger context window.
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.
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