Mercury 2 vs Beam 1.0
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Beam 1.0 by Reflection? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Beam 1.0 scores 19.5 points higher (30.3 vs 10.8) but costs 3.0× as much to run the benchmark ($319 vs $105; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Beam 1.0 when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Beam 1.0 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 30.3 | +180.6% Beam 1.0 is 2.8× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $318.73 | +203.7% Beam 1.0 is 3.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.08s | 8.02s | −0.7% Beam 1.0 is 0.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.40 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Beam 1.0 vs Mercury 2: 180.6% more intelligence, 203.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 0.7% faster 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.
- Beam 1.0 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Mercury 2Beam 1.0Today'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/reflection-beam · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/reflection-beam?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill