Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) by Alibaba? 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
Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) scores 0.4 points higher (12.7 vs 12.3) but costs 1.2× as much to run the benchmark ($234 vs $189; both mid-range class). Pick Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mercury 2.5.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 12.7 | +3.3% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 3.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $189.17 | $233.56 | +23.5% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 23.5% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.14s | 22.73s | +449.0% Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 … is 449.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.23 / $2.30 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2.5: 3.3% more intelligence, 23.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 449.0% 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.
- Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Mercury 2.5Qwen3 235B A22B 2507 (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/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/qwen3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill