Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B 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
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B scores 29.1 points higher (39.9 vs 10.8) but costs 25× as much to run the benchmark ($2632 vs $105; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 39.9 | +269.4% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 3.7× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $2,632.05 | +2408.1% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 25× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.52s | 65.43s | +903.5% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 903.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B vs Mercury 2: 269.4% more intelligence, 2408.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 903.5% 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.
- Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Mercury 2Qwen3.8 2.4T A95BToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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