Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B 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
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B scores 27.6 points higher (39.9 vs 12.3) but costs 12× as much to run the benchmark ($2632 vs $218; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B when you need intelligence above 12.3, and Mercury 2.5 when 12.3 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 39.9 | +224.4% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 3.2× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $218.11 | $2,632.05 | +1106.8% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 12× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.20s | 61.67s | +1368.3% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 1368.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B vs Mercury 2.5: 224.4% more intelligence, 1106.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1368.3% 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.
- Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Mercury 2.5Qwen3.8 2.4T A95BToday'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/qwen3-8-2-4t-a95b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/qwen3-8-2-4t-a95b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill