Mercury 2 vs Muse Glimmer (High)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Muse Glimmer (High) by Meta? 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
Muse Glimmer (High) scores 6.7 points higher (17.5 vs 10.8) but costs 1.4× as much to run the benchmark ($146 vs $105; both mid-range class). Pick Muse Glimmer (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mercury 2.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Muse Glimmer (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 17.5 | +62.0% Muse Glimmer (High) is 62.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $145.77 | +38.9% Muse Glimmer (High) is 38.9% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.56s | 24.79s | +277.9% Muse Glimmer (High) is 277.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Muse Glimmer (High) vs Mercury 2: 62.0% more intelligence, 38.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 277.9% slower end-to-end.
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.
- Muse Glimmer (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Max) scores 38.10 for $122.
Mercury 2Muse Glimmer (High)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/muse-glimmer · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/muse-glimmer?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill