Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Qwen3.6 35B A3B (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
Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) scores 7.4 points higher (18.2 vs 10.8) but costs 8.5× as much to run the benchmark ($896 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 18.2 | +68.5% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 68.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $896.39 | +754.2% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 8.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.52s | 46.94s | +619.9% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 619.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.38 / $2.25 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) vs Mercury 2: 68.5% more intelligence, 754.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 619.9% 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.
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Mercury 2Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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