Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2.5 by Inception or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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 Max (0902) scores 33.1 points higher (45.4 vs 12.3) but costs 23× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $218; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 12.3, and Mercury 2.5 when 12.3 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.3 | 45.4 | +269.1% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 3.7× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $218.11 | $4,934.79 | +2162.5% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 23× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.24s | 64.02s | +1409.9% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 1409.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Mercury 2.5: 269.1% more intelligence, 2162.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1409.9% 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 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Mercury 2.5Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto 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-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2-5/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill