Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Mercury 2.5
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) 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 Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 29.5 points higher (41.8 vs 12.3) but costs 32× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $218; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 12.3, and Mercury 2.5 when 12.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Mercury 2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.8 | 12.3 | −70.6% Mercury 2.5 is 70.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $218.11 | −96.8% Mercury 2.5 is 96.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 37.99s | 4.18s | −89.0% Mercury 2.5 is 89.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Mercury 2.5 vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max): 70.6% less intelligence, 96.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 89.0% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Mercury 2.5Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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