Ling 3.1 Flash vs Mercury 2
Which is better for the money: Ling 3.1 Flash by InclusionAI or Mercury 2 by Inception? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Ling 3.1 Flash scores 30.3 points higher (41.1 vs 10.8) but costs 9.7× as much to run the benchmark ($1015 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Ling 3.1 Flash when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Ling 3.1 Flash | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.1 | 10.8 | −73.7% Mercury 2 is 73.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,014.56 | $104.94 | −89.7% Mercury 2 is 89.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.66s | 8.08s | −40.8% Mercury 2 is 40.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $0.90 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Mercury 2 vs Ling 3.1 Flash: 73.7% less intelligence, 89.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 40.8% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Ling 3.1 Flash is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
- Mercury 2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
Ling 3.1 FlashMercury 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/ling-3-1-flash/mercury-2 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/ling-3-1-flash/mercury-2?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill