Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Mercury 2
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Mercury 2 by Inception? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium)
Mercury 2 vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 68.7% less intelligence, 86.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 22.4% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 10.8 | −68.7% Mercury 2 is 68.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $104.94 | +86.2% Mercury 2 is 86.2% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 10.41s | 8.08s | −22.4% Mercury 2 is 22.4% 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 (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Mercury 2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium)Mercury 2Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-medium/mercury-2 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-medium/mercury-2?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill