Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Qwen3.8 27B (Non-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
Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) scores 9.4 points higher (20.2 vs 10.8) but costs 19× as much to run the benchmark ($2022 vs $105; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 20.2 | +87.0% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 87.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $2,022.49 | +1827.3% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 19× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.54s | 13.95s | +113.3% Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reas… is 113.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning) vs Mercury 2: 87.0% more intelligence, 1827.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 113.3% 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 (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Mercury 2Qwen3.8 27B (Non-reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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