Mercury 2 vs Mistral Small 3.2
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Mistral Small 3.2 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Mercury 2
Mistral Small 3.2 vs Mercury 2: 35.2% less intelligence, 16.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 88.6% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3.2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 7.0 | −35.2% Mistral Small 3.2 is 35.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $121.78 | +16.0% Mistral Small 3.2 is 16.0% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.65s | 12.54s | +88.6% Mistral Small 3.2 is 88.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.07 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mercury 2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
- Mistral Small 3.2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
Mercury 2Mistral Small 3.2Today'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/mistral-small-3-2 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/mistral-small-3-2?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill