Mercury 2.5 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) 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
Mercury 2.5 scores 3.4 points higher (12.3 vs 8.9) but costs 3.0× as much to run the benchmark ($189 vs $63.7; both mid-range class). Pick Mercury 2.5 when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoni….
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 8.9 | −27.6% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 27.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $189.17 | $63.74 | −66.3% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 66.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.14s | 10.29s | +148.6% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 148.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.05 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2.5: 27.6% less intelligence, 66.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 148.6% 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.
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 34.50 for $56.4.
Mercury 2.5NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)Today'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/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill