DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) vs Mercury 2.5
Which is better for the money: DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) by DeepSeek or Mercury 2.5 by Inception? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5 vs DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25): 7.9% more intelligence, 52.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 79.2% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) | Mercury 2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 11.4 | 12.3 | +7.9% Mercury 2.5 is 7.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $460.74 | $218.11 | −52.7% Mercury 2.5 is 52.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.14s | 4.18s | −79.2% Mercury 2.5 is 79.2% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $4.00 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
DeepSeek R1 (Jan '25)Mercury 2.5Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-r1-0120/mercury-2-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-r1-0120/mercury-2-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill