Llama 4 Scout vs Mercury 2.5
Which is better for the money: Llama 4 Scout by Meta or Mercury 2.5 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 2.5 scores 5.8 points higher (12.3 vs 6.5) but costs 3.0× as much to run the benchmark ($218 vs $73.6; both mid-range class). Pick Mercury 2.5 when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Llama 4 Scout.
| Metric | Llama 4 Scout | Mercury 2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 6.5 | 12.3 | +89.2% Mercury 2.5 is 89.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $73.56 | $218.11 | +196.5% Mercury 2.5 is 3.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.99s | 4.24s | −15.0% Mercury 2.5 is 15.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.18 / $0.66 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Mercury 2.5 vs Llama 4 Scout: 89.2% more intelligence, 196.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 15.0% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Llama 4 Scout is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Xhigh) scores 34.60 for $66.8.
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Llama 4 ScoutMercury 2.5Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/llama-4-scout/mercury-2-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/llama-4-scout/mercury-2-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill