Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Qwen3.8-Flash-Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next scores 27.5 points higher (39.8 vs 12.3) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($363 vs $218; both mid-range class). Pick Qwen3.8-Flash-Next when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mercury 2.5.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 39.8 | +223.6% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 3.2× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $218.11 | $362.72 | +66.3% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 66.3% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.18s | 50.49s | +1107.9% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 1107.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.15 / $0.47 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next vs Mercury 2.5: 223.6% more intelligence, 66.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1107.9% 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-Flash-Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Mercury 2.5Qwen3.8-Flash-NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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