Mercury 2.5 vs Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) scores 10.6 points higher (22.9 vs 12.3) but costs 3.2× as much to run the benchmark ($596 vs $189; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 12.3, and Mercury 2.5 when 12.3 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 22.9 | +86.2% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 86.2% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $189.17 | $596.33 | +215.2% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 3.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.19s | 14.75s | +252.0% Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B… is 252.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.60 / $2.70 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2.5: 86.2% more intelligence, 215.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 252.0% 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 Ultra 550B A55B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Mercury 2.5Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B A55B (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-ultra-550b-a55b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/nvidia-nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill