GPT-5 mini (High) vs Mercury 2.5
Which is better for the money: GPT-5 mini (High) by OpenAI 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 GPT-5 mini (High)
Mercury 2.5 vs GPT-5 mini (High): 26.8% less intelligence, 15.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 92.6% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | GPT-5 mini (High) | Mercury 2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 16.8 | 12.3 | −26.8% Mercury 2.5 is 26.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $188.66 | $218.11 | +15.6% Mercury 2.5 is 15.6% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 58.74s | 4.33s | −92.6% Mercury 2.5 is 92.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $2.00 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- GPT-5 mini (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Xhigh) scores 41.20 for $158.
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
GPT-5 mini (High)Mercury 2.5Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-mini/mercury-2-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-mini/mercury-2-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill