Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? 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
Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) scores 4.8 points higher (15.6 vs 10.8) but costs 6.3× as much to run the benchmark ($661 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 15.6 | +44.4% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 44.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $661.29 | +530.2% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 6.3× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.52s | 21.36s | +227.6% Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Re… is 227.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.40 / $3.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2: 44.4% more intelligence, 530.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 227.6% 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.
- Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Mercury 2Qwen3.5 122B A10B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/qwen3-5-122b-a10b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/qwen3-5-122b-a10b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill