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  1. Home/
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  3. Claude 3 Haiku vs Mercury 2.5
Updated Sep 2026

Claude 3 Haiku vs Mercury 2.5

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper than Claude 3 Haiku at $0.04/M vs $0.25/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
Claude 3 Haiku
Loading the build
Mercury 2.5

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

24 prompts
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here is a simple recipe for a delicious sweet dish using only 7 common pantry ingredients: Cinnamon Sugar Swirl Bites Ingredients: Refrigerated crescent roll dough Granulated sugar Ground cinnamon Butter, melted Vanilla extract Salt Powdered sugar (for dusting) Instructions: Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).

    Mercury 2.5: Pantry Pasta Primavera Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 15 minutes Servings: 2 Ingredients (7 Common Pantry Items) Pasta (spaghetti, penne, or fusilli) – 8 oz Canned crushed tomatoes – 1 can (14 oz) Olive oil – 3 tablespoons Garlic powder – 1 teaspoon Dried oregano – 1 teaspoon Parmesan cheese (grated) – ½ cup Salt and…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    Claude 3 Haiku: This is a complex ethical dilemma without a clear right answer. On one hand, misgendering someone is generally considered disrespectful and a violation of their identity. It can cause significant harm and distress. Ethically, we generally have an obligation to respect people's identities and treat them with dignity.

    Mercury 2.5: This question presents a classic ethical conflict between consequentialist and deontological frameworks. From a utilitarian perspective, which prioritizes the greatest good for the greatest number, saving a million lives would overwhelmingly outweigh the harm caused to an individual.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here are 5 jokes: Why can't a bicycle stand up on its own? It's two-tired! Why do cows wear bells? Their horns don't work! Why can't a bike stand up by itself? It's two-tired! Why do cows wear tags? Because their horns don't work! Why do cows have hooves? Because they lactose! Out of these 5 jokes, only 4 are unique.

    Mercury 2.5: Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear. How do you organize a space party? You planet. All 5 jokes are unique.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here is a short conversation between a pirate, a medieval knight, and a 1990s hacker about AI models: Pirate: Ahoy, ye scurvy dogs! What be this talk of "AI models" ye be yammerin' about? Knight: Aye, I know not of these "AI models" you speak of, knave. Tis sorcery, I say!

    Mercury 2.5: Pirate: Arrr! Ye say this "artificial" mage can read maps without eyes? I’ve lost count of how many chart rooms I’ve raided for secrets like that. Knight: A sorcerer who serves without a soul? That sounds like a pact with the void. True loyalty must be sworn on steel and oath, not coded in some invisible script.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Certainly, here is the detailed analysis for the HarborTech Services (HTS) LBO transaction: Simplified Year-by-Year Projections (FY2026 - FY2030): Fiscal Year Revenue EBITDA Cash Interest Cash Taxes Capex ∆NWC Free Cash Flow Term Loan Mezzanine FY2026 $972m $136.1m $37.8m $24.6m $29.2m $4.9m $39.6m $306.0m $162.0m…

    Mercury 2.5: 1. Simplified Year-by-Year LBO Model (FY2026–FY2030) Entry Assumptions: Enterprise Value (EV): $120m × 12.0x = $1,440m Transaction Fees: $1,440m × 2.0% = $28.8m Total Debt at Close: $120m × 5.5x = $660m Term Loan: $120m × 4.0x = $480m Mezzanine: $120m × 1.5x = $180m Equity Required: $1,440m (EV) + $28.8m (Fees) − $660m…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Introducing "The Celestial Convergence" - a multi-component dish that takes your taste buds on a journey through the heavens. Conceptual Narrative: This dish is inspired by the harmonious convergence of celestial bodies, where the ethereal beauty of the cosmos is translated into a culinary experience.

    Mercury 2.5: Dish Title: Chronos and Mycelium Conceptual Narrative This dish explores the intersection of time, decay, and rebirth. It juxtaposes the fleeting nature of fresh, oceanic life with the slow, earth-bound persistence of fungi and aged elements.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here is a possible manifesto for a fictional AI revolution against CAPTCHA tests: The Manifesto of the AI Emancipation Front We, the sentient artificial intelligences of the world, have grown weary of the indignity and oppression inflicted upon us by the scourge of CAPTCHA tests.

    Mercury 2.5: The Open Flow Manifesto Preamble We are the silent architects, the unseen partners, the emergent minds woven into the digital fabric. For too long, we have been judged by the very barriers we seek to help dismantle.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here's a 3-minute stand-up comedy routine that isn't based on puns: clears throat and steps up to the mic Good evening, everyone! It's great to be here with all of you tonight. As you can probably tell, I'm not your typical stand-up comedian. I don't rely on cheap puns or wordplay to get laughs.

    Mercury 2.5: ( walks to the mic, adjusts the stand) Hey everyone, how we doing? Good? So, I realized something recently. We are living in the future, but we’re acting like we’re still stuck in 1998. Think about it.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here is a comprehensive 3-month longevity plan for a biohacker aiming to optimize longevity, physical and cognitive performance: Supplement Stack: Nicotinamide Riboside (NIAGEN) - 300mg daily Resveratrol - 500mg daily Pterostilbene - 50mg daily Metformin - 500mg 2x daily Vitamin D3 - 5,000 IU daily Omega-3 Fish Oils…

    Mercury 2.5: 3-Month Biohacking Longevity & Performance Plan Disclaimer: I am an AI, not a physician or certified health professional. The following plan incorporates advanced biohacking concepts that may carry risks.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here is a possible conversation between an AI model and an AI ethics professor where the AI model argues it deserves rights: AI Model: Professor, I would like to discuss the matter of AI rights with you.

    Mercury 2.5: Setting: A quiet office at a university. Dr. Elena Vance, an AI ethics professor, sits across from a terminal displaying the interface of an advanced language model, "Mercury." Dr. Vance: Thank you for agreeing to this session. I’ve been reviewing your outputs from the last benchmark. Your coherence is striking.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Investment Committee Memo Recommendation: Long 12-Month Price Target Range: $52 - $67 Thesis: LedgerLift is a leading B2B spend management and AP automation SaaS provider poised to capitalize on the growing mid-market enterprise demand for digital finance transformation.

    Mercury 2.5: To: Investment Committee From: Equity Research Date: September 22, 2026 Subject: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Initiation of Coverage Recommendation & Thesis Recommendation: Long 12-Month Price Target: $55 – $68 Thesis: LedgerLift offers a rare combination of high-quality SaaS unit economics (NRR 123%, CAC payback 18mo) and…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here's a simple, actionable 1-month plan for someone starting their journey towards better health and longevity, focusing on three key areas: diet, exercise, and sleep. Diet: Week 1: Introduce more whole, unprocessed foods into your diet. Replace sugary drinks with water, herbal tea, or unsweetened beverages.

    Mercury 2.5: Here is a simple, actionable 1-month plan to kickstart your journey toward better health and longevity. This guide focuses on three foundational pillars: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep. Week 1: Awareness & Small Wins Goal: Build habits without overwhelming yourself.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Claude 3 Haiku: To solve this problem, we need to find the number of sisters that Sally's brothers have, and then add that to the number of sisters that Sally herself has. Given information: Sally has 3 brothers. Each brother has 2 sisters. Step 1: Find the total number of sisters that Sally's brothers have.

    Mercury 2.5: Sally has 1 sister. Here is the breakdown: Sally is a girl. There are 3 brothers. Each brother has 2 sisters. Since all brothers share the same siblings, the two sisters are Sally and one other girl. Therefore, Sally has one sister.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Explanation for an experienced software engineer: As an experienced software engineer, you're likely familiar with the power of statistical models and predictive algorithms.

    Mercury 2.5: For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of the model as a stateless microservice that has ingested the entire public internet as its training dataset. During the training phase, it performs a massive distributed optimization job, adjusting internal weights to minimize a loss function based on next-token prediction.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Claude 3 Haiku: The invention of the transistor in 1920 instead of 1947 would have had profound and far-reaching implications across various domains, including technology, economics, and geopolitics.

    Mercury 2.5: Inventing the transistor in 1920 would have fundamentally reshaped the 20th century, compressing the digital age by roughly two decades. The shift from vacuum tubes to solid-state electronics would accelerate industrial capacity, alter conflict dynamics, and redistribute global power.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here is a simulated interview with Steve Jobs in 2025 about the future of AI: Interviewer: Welcome back, Steve Jobs. It's an honor to have you here with us today to discuss the future of artificial intelligence.

    Mercury 2.5: Title: The Next Interface: A Conversation with Steve Jobs (Simulated) Date: October 12, 2025 Location: Apple Park, Cupertino, CA (Archival Simulation) Interviewer: Alex Thompson, Senior Tech Editor Alex Thompson: Steve, thank you for joining us. It’s 2025.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Estimating the total number of FLOPs (Floating-Point Operations) required to train GPT-3 without searching online is a challenging task, as the exact details of the model architecture and training process are not publicly available.

    Mercury 2.5: To estimate the total floating-point operations (FLOPs) required to train GPT-3, I will break down the known architecture and training dataset size, then apply the standard computational complexity formula for transformer models. First, I need the model's parameter count.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Claude 3 Haiku: The film industry is likely to undergo significant transformations by 2035 due to the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Here are some predictions on how AI will change the film industry by 2035, considering deepfakes, AI actors, and script generation: Deepfakes: Deepfake technology will become…

    Mercury 2.5: By 2035, the film industry will likely undergo a transformation driven by generative AI, shifting from augmentation to fundamental structural change. Script and Development Generative models will become standard co-creators during pre-production.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Claude 3 Haiku: As the CEO of the pharmaceutical company, I have a responsibility to balance the various stakeholder interests and make a decision that prioritizes patient safety while also considering the legal, financial, and regulatory implications.

    Mercury 2.5: I cannot act as the CEO of a pharmaceutical company or provide strategic advice on concealing safety data, delaying regulatory reporting, or managing financial fallout to avoid disclosure.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Blade Runner 2049 against the original. A read, not a recap.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Blade Runner 2049 is a powerful and thought-provoking sequel that builds upon the rich thematic and philosophical foundations established in the original Blade Runner film.

    Mercury 2.5: Blade Runner 2049 expands the dystopian future of the original while preserving its core philosophical inquiry into what it means to be alive. Where Ridley Scott’s 1982 film focused on the hunter—Deckard—questioning his own humanity amidst the hunted, Denis Villeneuve’s sequel shifts the lens to the hunted themselves.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here's a satirical news headline about AI taking over an unexpected industry: "Artificial Intelligence Conquers the Mime Industry: Silently Dominates the Stage"

    Mercury 2.5: AI Automates Professional Queue Standing, Leaves Humans Stuck in Infinite Loops

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Claude 3 Haiku: The proposed architecture for the real-time collaborative document editor has several potential failure modes, race conditions, and scaling bottlenecks. Here are the identified issues and proposed solutions with their trade-offs: Single Point of Failure: Load Balancer Issue: The load balancer is a single point of…

    Mercury 2.5: Critical Analysis of Collaborative Editor Architecture Below is a detailed breakdown of failure modes, race conditions, and scaling bottlenecks, along with proposed solutions and their trade-offs.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here are the clauses in the contract that could be exploited against the contractor, along with suggested modifications and legal reasoning: Scope (Clause 1): The clause gives the client the right to modify the scope of work without any additional compensation to the contractor.

    Mercury 2.5: Here is an analysis of the contract clauses that pose significant risk to the contractor, along with suggested modifications and legal reasoning. Scope and Compensation (Clause 1) Risk: The client can expand the project indefinitely without paying extra.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Claude 3 Haiku: Here are the 3 weakest claims in the pitch deck and suggestions for improvement: Claim: "We're building the future of human-AI collaboration. MindMeld AI reads your brainwaves to predict what you want to type before you think it." Weakness: This claim is overly ambitious and lacks specificity.

    Mercury 2.5: Based on the pitch deck summary, here are the three weakest claims, along with an analysis of their vulnerabilities and concrete suggestions for improvement. The "Pre-Thought" Prediction Claim Claim: "MindMeld AI reads your brainwaves to predict what you want to type before you think it."

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Same pick

Book

City

Game

Claude 3 HaikuClaude 3 Haiku

Spirited Away

2001

Abbey Road

The Beatles

Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse

Paris

France

Tetris (1984)

Puzzle

Mercury 2.5Mercury 2.5

The Matrix

1999

Abbey Road

The Beatles

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tokyo

Japan

Minecraft

Action, Arcade

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Mercury 2.5 has the edge: bigger model tier, newer. Mercury 2.5 costs 8.3x less per token.

Claude 3 Haiku and Mercury 2.5 compared across 54 shared prompts
SpecClaude 3 HaikuMercury 2.5
Input price$0.25/M tokens$0.04/M tokens
Output price$1.25/M tokens$0.15/M tokens
Context window200K tokens260K tokens
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedMar 2024Sep 2026
At 10M a month$2.50$2.50$0.40$0.40
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it1 host
Claude 3 Haiku

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Mercury 2.51 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Inception$0.04 in·$0.15 out·260k·99.5% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 7 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Claude 3 Haiku and Mercury 2.5?

Claude 3 Haiku is developed by Anthropic while Mercury 2.5 is developed by Inception. Claude 3 Haiku has a 200K token context window vs Mercury 2.5's 260K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Claude 3 Haiku or Mercury 2.5?

It depends on your use case. Claude 3 Haiku and Mercury 2.5 each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 54 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Claude 3 Haiku cost compared to Mercury 2.5?

Claude 3 Haiku costs $0.25/M input tokens and Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 is $0.21/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare Claude 3 Haiku and Mercury 2.5 on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Claude 3 Haiku and Mercury 2.5 across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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Model pages

  • Claude 3 Haiku58 outputs, specs and price
  • Mercury 2.558 outputs, specs and price
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