Mercury 2 vs Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (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
Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) scores 2.0 points higher (12.8 vs 10.8) but costs 7.6× as much to run the benchmark ($1319 vs $175; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 12.8 | +18.5% Nemotron 3 Super 120B… is 18.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $174.51 | $1,318.62 | +655.6% Nemotron 3 Super 120B… is 7.6× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.54s | 16.68s | +155.0% Nemotron 3 Super 120B… is 155.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.30 / $0.90 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2: 18.5% more intelligence, 655.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 155.0% 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.
- Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Mercury 2Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
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