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Van Data Team
Current modelInception

Mercury 2.5 benchmarks, pricing and specs

Mercury 2.5 is an Inception model released on September 8, 2026 that takes text input and produces text. It costs $0.20 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens and accepts up to 260,000 tokens of context.

Per 1M input tokens
$0.20
Per 1M output tokens
$0.75
Context window
260K

Data verified October 13, 2026 · Dataset 2026-10-13

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Key facts

Provider
Inception
Model family
Mercury
Release date
September 8, 2026
Status
Current
Access
API only
API model id
mercury-2.5
Context window
260,000 tokens
Max output
65,536 tokens
Input
text
Output
text
Task families
text
Declared capabilities
reasoning

Mercury 2.5 pricing

It is the #6 cheapest of 47 current text models priced per 1M input tokens.

UnitPrice (USD)TierAppliesSource
1M input tokens$0.20standardCurrent
1M output tokens$0.75standardCurrent
1M input tokens$0.02cachedCurrent

Independent benchmark results

Scores come from independent evaluators that ran the model themselves, pinned to a dated snapshot. Rank is among current models in the same snapshot. Inception's own launch figures are listed under strengths with the publisher named, because they are not measured the same way.

No independent benchmark has published a result for Mercury 2.5 yet. It is still compared below on price, context and capabilities.

Strengths, cautions and best uses

Strengths

  • A diffusion language model that refines many tokens in parallel; Inception reports 1,107 tokens per second on widely available NVIDIA GPUs
  • Tunable reasoning, parallel tool calls and schema-aligned JSON
  • A 260K-token context with up to 65,536 output tokens

Cautions

  • Inception publishes no benchmark scores for it, and no independent score is recorded here
  • The recorded rates are list prices; an 80% launch discount was running with no published end date

Best for

  • Latency-critical agent loops and voice agents
  • High-throughput, low-cost text generation

Alternatives to Mercury 2.5

The closest current textmodels by price. The cheapest model that scores as well or better is listed first; failing that, the cheapest one within 3% of the benchmark's scale.

Compare Mercury 2.5 with

Mercury 2.5 FAQ

How much does Mercury 2.5 cost?

Mercury 2.5 costs $0.20 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens at the standard tier. It is the #6 cheapest of 47 current text models priced per 1M input tokens. Source: Inception, verified October 13, 2026.

What is the context window of Mercury 2.5?

Mercury 2.5 accepts up to 260,000 tokens of context. It can return up to 65,536 tokens in one response. That ranks #50 of 57 current text models by context length.

Is Mercury 2.5 open source or API only?

Mercury 2.5 is available through Inception's API only; its weights are not published.

What are the best alternatives to Mercury 2.5?

The closest current alternatives by price and measured performance are GPT-5.6 Luna (same price per 1M input tokens, $0.20), Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (25% more per 1M input tokens, $0.25 vs $0.20), GLM-5.3-Flash (25% cheaper per 1M input tokens, $0.15 vs $0.20) and MiMo-V2.6-Flash (30% cheaper per 1M input tokens, $0.14 vs $0.20).

Sources

Cite this page

Van Data Team. "Mercury 2.5 Benchmarks, Pricing and Specs." AI Model Benchmark Dataset 2026-10-13. https://vandatateam.com/ai-model-benchmarks/mercury-2-5

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Production evaluation

Deciding whether Mercury 2.5 fits your workload?

Public benchmarks narrow the shortlist. We test the finalists on your own tasks, data and cost limits, then build the routing and review controls to run the winner in production.

  • Evaluation cases and acceptance thresholds tied to real work
  • Model routing, fallbacks and cost controls
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