Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2.5
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Mercury 2.5 by Inception? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) scores 4.6 points higher (16.9 vs 12.3) but costs 2.7× as much to run the benchmark ($594 vs $218; premium vs mid-range cost classes). Pick Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mercury 2.5.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) | Mercury 2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.9 | 12.3 | −27.2% Mercury 2.5 is 27.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $594.08 | $218.11 | −63.3% Mercury 2.5 is 63.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.38s | 4.18s | −82.9% Mercury 2.5 is 82.9% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.00 / $5.00 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Mercury 2.5 vs Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning): 27.2% less intelligence, 63.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 82.9% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude 4.5 Haiku (Reasoning)Mercury 2.5Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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