LongCat 2.0 vs Mercury 2
Which is better for the money: LongCat 2.0 by LongCat 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
LongCat 2.0 scores 8.3 points higher (19.1 vs 10.8) but costs 5.2× as much to run the benchmark ($545 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick LongCat 2.0 when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | LongCat 2.0 | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 19.1 | 10.8 | −43.5% Mercury 2 is 43.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $544.74 | $104.94 | −80.7% Mercury 2 is 80.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 35.51s | 6.65s | −81.3% Mercury 2 is 81.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.75 / $2.95 | $0.25 / $0.75 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Mercury 2 vs LongCat 2.0: 43.5% less intelligence, 80.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 81.3% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- LongCat 2.0 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Mercury 2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
LongCat 2.0Mercury 2Today'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/longcat-2-0/mercury-2 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/longcat-2-0/mercury-2?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill