Mercury 2 vs Solar Pro 4
Which is better for the money: Mercury 2 by Inception or Solar Pro 4 by Upstage? 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
Solar Pro 4 scores 15.8 points higher (26.6 vs 10.8) but costs 7.0× as much to run the benchmark ($737 vs $105; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Solar Pro 4 when you need intelligence above 10.8, and Mercury 2 when 10.8 is enough.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Solar Pro 4 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.8 | 26.6 | +146.3% Solar Pro 4 is 2.5× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $104.94 | $736.82 | +602.1% Solar Pro 4 is 7.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.08s | Not reported | — not comparable |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Solar Pro 4 vs Mercury 2: 146.3% more intelligence, 602.1% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.
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.
- Solar Pro 4 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Mercury 2Solar Pro 4Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/solar-pro4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mercury-2/solar-pro4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill