Granite 4.2 30B vs Mercury 2.5
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 30B by IBM 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 Granite 4.2 30B
Mercury 2.5 vs Granite 4.2 30B: 3.1% less intelligence, 96.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 92.3% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 30B | Mercury 2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.7 | 12.3 | −3.1% Mercury 2.5 is 3.1% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $110.83 | $218.11 | +96.8% Mercury 2.5 is 96.8% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 55.20s | 4.24s | −92.3% Mercury 2.5 is 92.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.16 / $0.65 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
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 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Granite 4.2 30BMercury 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/granite-4-2-30b/mercury-2-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-30b/mercury-2-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill