Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) vs Mercury 2
Which is better for the money: Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) by Google or Mercury 2 by Inception? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) scores 30.1 points higher (40.9 vs 10.8) but costs 15× as much to run the benchmark ($1623 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.9 | 10.8 | −73.6% Mercury 2 is 73.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,622.73 | $104.94 | −93.5% Mercury 2 is 93.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.13s | 8.08s | −75.6% Mercury 2 is 75.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $3.75 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text |
Mercury 2 vs Gemini 3.8 Flash (High): 73.6% less intelligence, 93.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 75.6% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (High) 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.
Gemini 3.8 Flash (High)Mercury 2Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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