Mercury 2 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Mercury 2 scores 1.9 points higher (10.8 vs 8.9) but costs 2.7× as much to run the benchmark ($175 vs $63.7; both mid-range class). Pick Mercury 2 when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoni….
| Metric | Mercury 2 | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 8.9 | −17.6% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 17.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $174.51 | $63.74 | −63.5% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 63.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.54s | 10.29s | +57.3% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 57.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.05 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2: 17.6% less intelligence, 63.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 57.3% 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 (Xhigh) scores 41.20 for $158.
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 34.50 for $56.4.
Mercury 2NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill