DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max) vs Mercury 2
Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max) by DeepSeek or Mercury 2 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
DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max) scores 25.2 points higher (36.0 vs 10.8) but costs 11× as much to run the benchmark ($1122 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max) | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 36.0 | 10.8 | −70.0% Mercury 2 is 70.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,122.27 | $104.94 | −90.6% Mercury 2 is 90.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 25.87s | 6.65s | −74.3% Mercury 2 is 74.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.32 / $3.96 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Mercury 2 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max): 70.0% less intelligence, 90.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 74.3% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Mercury 2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813 (Max)Mercury 2Today'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-v4-pro/mercury-2 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v4-pro/mercury-2?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill