Mercury 2.5 vs Nemotron 3.5 Super VL
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Nemotron 3.5 Super VL by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Nemotron 3.5 Super VL scores 14.2 points higher (26.5 vs 12.3) but costs 1.5× as much to run the benchmark ($283 vs $189; both mid-range class). Pick Nemotron 3.5 Super VL when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mercury 2.5.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 26.5 | +115.4% Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is 2.2× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $189.17 | $282.51 | +49.3% Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is 49.3% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.14s | 6.33s | +52.9% Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is 52.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.23 / $0.57 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Nemotron 3.5 Super VL vs Mercury 2.5: 115.4% more intelligence, 49.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 52.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Terra (Medium) scores 41.30 for $175.
- Nemotron 3.5 Super VL is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Mercury 2.5Nemotron 3.5 Super VLToday'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/mercury-2-5/nemotron-3-5-super-vl · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/nemotron-3-5-super-vl?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill