Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Mercury 2 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 Sonnet (Reasoning) scores 9.9 points higher (20.7 vs 10.8) but costs 14× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 10.8 | −47.8% Mercury 2 is 47.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $104.94 | −93.0% Mercury 2 is 93.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.86s | 6.65s | −68.1% Mercury 2 is 68.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Mercury 2 vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 47.8% less intelligence, 93.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 68.1% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Mercury 2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Mercury 2Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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