Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? 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
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) scores 0.4 points higher (11.2 vs 10.8) but costs 3.1× as much to run the benchmark ($329 vs $105; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 11.2 | +3.7% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 3.7% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $328.86 | +213.4% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 3.1× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.65s | 43.21s | +549.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 549.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2: 3.7% more intelligence, 213.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 549.8% 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 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Mercury 2Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)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/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill