Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) scores 15.3 points higher (27.6 vs 12.3) but costs 5.3× as much to run the benchmark ($1165 vs $218; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) when you need intelligence above 12.3, and Mercury 2.5 when 12.3 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 27.6 | +124.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 2.2× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $218.11 | $1,165.00 | +434.1% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 5.3× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.39s | 55.12s | +1155.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 1155.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs Mercury 2.5: 124.4% more intelligence, 434.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1155.6% 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 27B (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Mercury 2.5Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)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/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill