Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) vs Mercury 2.5
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) by Anthropic or Mercury 2.5 by Inception? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Haiku 5.5 (High)
Mercury 2.5 vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (High): 67.5% less intelligence, 131.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 85.2% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) | Mercury 2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 37.8 | 12.3 | −67.5% Mercury 2.5 is 67.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $94.07 | $218.11 | +131.9% Mercury 2.5 is 2.3× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 28.27s | 4.18s | −85.2% Mercury 2.5 is 85.2% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (High)Mercury 2.5Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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