Inception
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5 is the fastest reasoning LLM, and the latest diffusion LLM (dLLM) from Inception.
At a glance
- Input / 1M
- $0.04
- Output / 1M
- $0.15
- Context
- 260K
- Max output
- 66K
- Intelligence
- 12.3
- Released
- Sep 2026
Pricing
Mercury 2.5 API pricing
Per-token rates, plus what common tasks actually cost.
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.04 |
|---|---|
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.15 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | $0.00 |
| Cache writePer 1M tokens | Not available |
Chat message
2K in, 500 out
$0.16
per 1,000 requests
Coding task
30K in, 4K out
$1.80
per 1,000 requests
Long document summary
150K in, 2K out
$6.30
per 1,000 requests
Benchmarks
Mercury 2.5 benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
12.3
Coding index
Not available
Agentic index
Not available
Specs
Context window and capabilities
What it can read, what it can write, and which API features it supports.
- Context window
- 260K tokens
- Max output
- 66K tokens
- Input types
- Text
- Output types
- Text
- Reasoning effort
- High, Medium, Low, None
- Release date
- September 8, 2026
- Tool calling
- Structured outputs
- JSON mode
- Reasoning
- Temperature
- Stop sequences
- Deterministic seed
- Verbosity control
Compare
Mercury 2.5 vs other models
See how Mercury 2.5 stacks up head to head on price, benchmarks, and features.
VS
Mercury 2.5 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
Inception vs Google
See comparisonVS
Mercury 2.5 vs gpt-oss-120b
Inception vs OpenAI
See comparisonVSMercury 2.5 vs Gemma 4 31B
Inception vs Google
See comparisonVSMercury 2.5 vs gpt-oss-20b
Inception vs OpenAI
See comparisonVSMercury 2.5 vs GPT-5 Nano
Inception vs OpenAI
See comparisonVS
Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507
Inception vs Qwen
See comparisonAlternatives
Mercury 2.5 alternatives
Similar models worth considering, and where each one has the edge.
Gemma 4 31B
Qwen
Qwen3.5-9B
OpenAI
GPT-5 Nano
Want to learn about other models? Browse all models
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How much does Mercury 2.5 cost?
Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04 per 1M input tokens and $0.15 per 1M output tokens through the API. A typical chat message costs about $0.16 per 1,000 messages.
What is the context window of Mercury 2.5?
Mercury 2.5 accepts up to 260K tokens of input and can write up to 66K tokens in a single response.
What is the best alternative to Mercury 2.5?
Gemma 4 31B from Google is a strong alternative. It offers: higher intelligence score, larger 262k context, accepts image and video.
Can I use Mercury 2.5 alongside other models?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to Mercury 2.5 and any other models you pick at the same time, so you can compare answers side by side.
Try Mercury 2.5 next to every other model.
Use Mercury 2.5 alongside all the other models. Use one at a time, or multiple together. Get the best answer from every AI.