Granite 4.2 30B vs Mercury 2
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 30B by IBM 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
Granite 4.2 30B scores 1.9 points higher (12.7 vs 10.8) but costs 1.1× as much to run the benchmark ($111 vs $105; both mid-range class). Pick Granite 4.2 30B when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mercury 2.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 30B | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.7 | 10.8 | −15.0% Mercury 2 is 15.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $110.83 | $104.94 | −5.3% Mercury 2 is 5.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 51.51s | 6.65s | −87.1% Mercury 2 is 87.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.16 / $0.65 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Mercury 2 vs Granite 4.2 30B: 15.0% less intelligence, 5.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 87.1% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Granite 4.2 30B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
- Mercury 2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
Granite 4.2 30BMercury 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/granite-4-2-30b/mercury-2 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-30b/mercury-2?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill