Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Qwen3.6 35B A3B (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
Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) scores 5.9 points higher (18.2 vs 12.3) but costs 4.1× as much to run the benchmark ($896 vs $218; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 12.3, and Mercury 2.5 when 12.3 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 18.2 | +48.0% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 48.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $218.11 | $896.39 | +311.0% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 4.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.18s | 46.94s | +1023.0% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 1023.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.38 / $2.25 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2.5: 48.0% more intelligence, 311.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1023.0% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mercury 2.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Mercury 2.5Qwen3.6 35B 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/qwen3-6-35b-a3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/qwen3-6-35b-a3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill