--- title: "Inception: Mercury 2 — price, capability and what beats it · Undominated.ai" canonical: https://undominated.ai/models/inception__mercury-2/ description: "Inception: Mercury 2: $0.250/M in, $0.750/M out. Independent capability scores, and alternatives compared under recorded workload and capability requirements." --- # Inception: Mercury 2 — price, capability and what beats it · Undominated.ai > Inception: Mercury 2: $0.250/M in, $0.750/M out. Independent capability scores, and alternatives compared under recorded workload and capability requirements. [Check base rates for this workload](/check/inception__mercury-2/) [Cheaper alternatives](/alternatives/inception__mercury-2/) [Family](/families/mercury/) [Compare models](https://undominated.ai/compare/?models=inception%2Fmercury-2) Comparison context Choose up to three standard models in Compare. Requirements and prompt length apply in Compare. This page keeps its stated price basis and workload controls. MODEL PROOF # Mercury 2 Inception · 04 Mar 2026 Balanced Summarise Chat Code gen Agentic BETTER VALUE OPTION ## A stored alternative has an equal-or-higher measured score and an equal-or-lower price. **$0.375** / 1M tokens Balanced · 3 tokens in per 1 out [GLM 5.3 Flash](/models/z-ai__glm-5.3-flash/) · Δ score 114.4 points · 37% lower measured price · $0.238 / 1M tokens [Gemma 4 31B](/models/google__gemma-4-31b-it/) is a further stored option with these losses: 50K → 16K max output Evidence as of 06 Oct 2026 [openrouter/models](https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models) [LMArena · cc-by-4.0](https://huggingface.co/datasets/lmarena-ai/leaderboard-dataset) Independent LMArena score 1,355.2 ± 10.35 · 3,197 votes Context window 128K Maximum output 50K Input modalities text Output modalities text Published input price $0.250 / 1M tokens Published output price $0.750 / 1M tokens Pricing kind fixed Inspect [complete billing conditions](#billing-details) and endpoint terms below. Price from Inception: the cheapest offer that is serving, at standard delivery and at the maker’s precision or better, at its standard rate. Every price dimension · USD per million tokens | Input | $0.250 /M | | --- | --- | | Output | $0.750 /M | | Cached input | $0.025 /M | | Cache write | Unknown /M | | Cache write 1h | Unknown /M | | Reasoning | Unknown /M | ### Who sells it The same weights, different shops. Cheapest is not like-for-like when serving precision differs. 1 provider offers · rates, limits and conditions Rates are USD per million tokens. Endpoint terms can differ even when the quoted price and precision match. A listed parameter is a provider declaration, not a task-success test. | Seller | Input | Output | Precision | Uptime (1d) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Seller Inception inception Endpoint terms Cached input /M $0.025 Context limit 128,000 tokens Output limit 50,000 tokens Tools Listed by endpoint Reasoning Listed by endpoint Promotional discount None reported Uptime · last 30 minutes 100.00% | Input $0.250 | Output $0.750 | Precision undeclared | Uptime (1d) 99.98% | ### Independent scores | LMArena Elo | 1355.2 default | | --- | --- | LMArena Elo under CC BY 4.0. Absence of another board is not a score of zero. #### Best rankings by task - ASCII art #69 999 - SVG #83 996 - 3D #106 987 - Data visualisation #107 1016 - UI components #108 1001 - Code categories #111 1023 - Game development #112 999 - Websites #113 1037 Per-task Elo and rank from [Design Arena](https://designarena.ai), via OpenRouter’s model feed. The rank is the feed’s, and it counts models OpenRouter does not list. ### Capability | Context window | 128K | | --- | --- | | Max output | 50K | | Input modes | text | | Tool use | yes | | Reasoning | optional | | Open weights | Unknown | ### Provenance | Price source | [openrouter.ai](https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models) | | --- | --- | | Fetched | 2026-10-06 | | Quality data | verified | Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM). Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2 produces and refines multiple tokens in parallel, achieving... ## Questions this page answers What does Mercury 2 cost? $0.250/M in, $0.750/M out in this catalogue, as of the fetch date on this page. That is the API row, not a subscription. Does Mercury 2 have an independent quality score? Mercury 2 has an LMArena score in this catalogue. What beats Mercury 2? GLM 5.3 Flash has an equal-or-higher measured score and an equal-or-lower price. Does this page use Artificial Analysis scores for Mercury 2? No. Artificial Analysis figures are not published here. Quality on this page is LMArena Elo where a score exists; otherwise the row is unrated. MODEL MONUMENT ## Save or share this proof Download proof card · 1200 × 630 Preview and more sharing options Inception: Mercury 2. Balanced workload. Better value option available. Evidence as of 06 Oct 2026. Copy model link Download square card · 1080 × 1080 Copy landscape image Share landscape card ## Related - Both better and cheaper [GLM 5.3 Flash](/models/z-ai__glm-5.3-flash/) - Higher score and cheaper, with a named trade [Gemma 4 31B](/models/google__gemma-4-31b-it/) - Nearby on the capability axis [Gemma 3 27B](/models/google__gemma-3-27b-it/) - Same vendor [Mercury 2.5](/models/inception__mercury-2.5/) - Inception models [Inception](/providers/inception/) - Where this model appears [significance](/significance/) - Nearby on the capability axis [o4 Mini](/models/openai__o4-mini/) - Where this model appears [cheapest-at](/cheapest-at/) - Nearby on the capability axis [MiniMax M2.5](/models/minimax__minimax-m2.5/) ## Badge The verdict as one SVG, for a README or a docs page. It states this model's dominance status at the balanced workload on the LMArena lens, with the date it was computed, and it is rebuilt with the catalogue — so it changes when the verdict changes, including to one you would rather it did not. Markdown Copy [![Mercury 2 — Undominated.ai dominance verdict](https://undominated.ai/badge/inception__mercury-2.svg)](https://undominated.ai/models/inception__mercury-2/) HTML Copy Mercury 2 — Undominated.ai dominance verdict Direct file: [https://undominated.ai/badge/inception__mercury-2.svg](https://undominated.ai/badge/inception__mercury-2.svg) — a static SVG, written by scripts/build-badges.mjs on every build, so the copy you embed is never older than the last deploy. ## Continue your investigation - [Explore model families](/families/) - [Compare a shortlist](/compare/) - [Check a model](/check/) - [Understand the evidence](/methodology/)