gpt-oss-20b (High) vs Mercury 2
Which is better for the money: gpt-oss-20b (High) by OpenAI 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
Mercury 2 scores 1.8 points higher (10.8 vs 9.0) but costs 3.6× as much to run the benchmark ($105 vs $28.8; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Mercury 2 when you need intelligence above 9.0, and gpt-oss-20b (High) when 9.0 is enough.
| Metric | gpt-oss-20b (High) | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 9.0 | 10.8 | +20.0% Mercury 2 is 20.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $28.81 | $104.94 | +264.2% Mercury 2 is 3.6× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 16.79s | 6.65s | −60.4% Mercury 2 is 60.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.05 / $0.22 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Mercury 2 vs gpt-oss-20b (High): 20.0% more intelligence, 264.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 60.4% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- gpt-oss-20b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
- Mercury 2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
gpt-oss-20b (High)Mercury 2Today'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/gpt-oss-20b/mercury-2 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-oss-20b/mercury-2?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill