GLM-5.3 (Low) vs Mercury 2.5

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Low) by Z AI 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

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 34.30
Total cost: $1013

InceptionMercury 2.5Off the frontier

Intelligence: 12.30
Total cost: $218

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Low) scores 22.0 points higher (34.3 vs 12.3) but costs 4.6× as much to run the benchmark ($1013 vs $218; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Low) when you need intelligence above 12.3, and Mercury 2.5 when 12.3 is enough.

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Low)	Mercury 2.5	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	34.3	12.3	−64.1% Mercury 2.5 is 64.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$1,012.50	$218.11	−78.5% Mercury 2.5 is 78.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	30.79s	4.33s	−85.9% Mercury 2.5 is 85.9% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$0.25 / $0.75
Input modalities	Text	Text

Mercury 2.5 vs GLM-5.3 (Low): 64.1% less intelligence, 78.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 85.9% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Low): what beats it Mercury 2.5: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.3 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.

GLM-5.3 (Low)Mercury 2.5Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3-low/mercury-2-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3-low/mercury-2-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill