Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Mercury 2.5
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2.5: 8.9% less intelligence, 50.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 907.4% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 11.2 | −8.9% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 8.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $218.11 | $328.86 | +50.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 50.8% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.18s | 42.11s | +907.4% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 907.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Mercury 2.5Qwen3.5 9B (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/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill