Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Mercury 2.5
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) 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 Sonnet 5 (Low) scores 12.0 points higher (24.3 vs 12.3) but costs 3.0× as much to run the benchmark ($653 vs $218; premium vs mid-range cost classes). Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mercury 2.5.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Mercury 2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 12.3 | −49.4% Mercury 2.5 is 49.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $218.11 | −66.6% Mercury 2.5 is 66.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.68s | 4.18s | −51.8% Mercury 2.5 is 51.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Mercury 2.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 49.4% less intelligence, 66.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 51.8% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) 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 Sonnet 5 (Low)Mercury 2.5Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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