AI model comparison
Mercury 2 vs Llama 4 Maverick
Pricing, context window, benchmarks, and features compared side by side. Or skip the guesswork and send one prompt to both.
Inception
Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM).
- Input / 1M
- $0.25
- Output / 1M
- $0.75
- Context
- 128K
Meta
Llama 4 Maverick
Llama 4 Maverick 17B Instruct (128E) is a high-capacity multimodal language model from Meta, built on a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture with 128 experts and 17 billion active parameters per forward
- Input / 1M
- $0.19
- Output / 1M
- $0.65
- Context
- 1.05M
At a glance
Quick verdict
How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.
Lower price
Llama 4 Maverick
1.2x cheaper for a typical chat
Higher intelligence score
Mercury 2
10.8 vs 9.3 on Artificial Analysis
Larger context window
Llama 4 Maverick
1.05M vs 128K tokens
Newer release
Mercury 2
Released March 4, 2026
Benchmarks
Benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
Mercury 210.8Coding index
Mercury 231.1Agentic index
Mercury 21.6Pricing
Mercury 2 vs Llama 4 Maverick API pricing
Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.25 | $0.19 |
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.75 | $0.65 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | $0.03 | $0.05 |
| Cache writePer 1M tokens | Not available | Not available |
What it costs in practice
Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.
Chat message
2K in, 500 out
Mercury 2$0.88Coding task
30K in, 4K out
Mercury 2$10.50$3.75 cachedLong document summary
150K in, 2K out
Mercury 2$39$5.25 cachedSpecs
Context window and capabilities
How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 128K tokens | 1.05M tokens |
| Max output | 50K tokens | 16K tokens |
| Input types | Text | Image, Text |
| Output types | Text | Text |
| Reasoning effort levels | High, Medium, Low, None | Not available |
| Default reasoning effort | Medium | Not available |
| Release date | March 4, 2026 | April 5, 2025 |
Features
Supported features
API features available for each model.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Tool calling | Supported | Supported |
| Structured outputs | Supported | Supported |
| JSON mode | Supported | Supported |
| Reasoning | Supported | Not supported |
| Temperature | Supported | Supported |
| Stop sequences | Supported | Supported |
| Deterministic seed | Not supported | Supported |
| Verbosity control | Not supported | Not supported |
Keep exploring
More on these models
Other head-to-heads, the full model page, and the alternatives list for each model.
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
- Llama 4 Maverick vs gpt-oss-120b
- Llama 4 Maverick vs GPT-4o-mini
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Qwen3 Coder Next
- Llama 4 Maverick vs DeepSeek V3 0324
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 4 Scout
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Mistral Small 4
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Mistral Large 3 2512
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Solar Pro 3
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Sonar
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Hermes 3 70B Instruct
- Llama 4 Maverick vs Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
Our take
Llama 4 Maverick is 1.2x cheaper for a typical chat. Mercury 2 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (10.8 vs 9.3). Llama 4 Maverick has the larger context window (1.05M vs 128K tokens). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick cheaper?
Llama 4 Maverick is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Llama 4 Maverick costs $0.19 per 1M input tokens and $0.65 per 1M output tokens, while Mercury 2 costs $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens.
Which has a bigger context window, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?
Llama 4 Maverick supports up to 1.05M tokens of context, compared with 128K for Mercury 2.
Is Mercury 2 smarter than Llama 4 Maverick?
On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Mercury 2 scores 10.8 and Llama 4 Maverick scores 9.3, putting Mercury 2 ahead. Benchmarks don't capture everything, so the best test is running your own prompts through both.
Can I use Mercury 2 and Llama 4 Maverick at the same time?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Mercury 2 and Llama 4 Maverick answer side by side and keep the better response.
Why choose? Ask both.
Send one prompt to Mercury 2 and Llama 4 Maverick at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.