Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) 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
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) scores 22.9 points higher (33.7 vs 10.8) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($1336 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 33.7 | +212.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 3.1× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $1,336.09 | +1173.2% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 13× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.56s | 59.47s | +806.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is 806.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) vs Mercury 2: 212.0% more intelligence, 1173.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 806.6% 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Mercury 2Qwen3.8 27B (Xhigh)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/qwen3-8-27b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/qwen3-8-27b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill