Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 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-Flash-Next scores 29.0 points higher (39.8 vs 10.8) but costs 3.5× as much to run the benchmark ($363 vs $105; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8-Flash-Next when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8-Flash-Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 39.8 | +268.5% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 3.7× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $362.72 | +245.6% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 3.5× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.56s | 50.52s | +670.1% Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is 670.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.15 / $0.47 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next vs Mercury 2: 268.5% more intelligence, 245.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 670.1% 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-Flash-Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Mercury 2Qwen3.8-Flash-NextToday'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-flash-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/qwen3-8-flash-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill