Mercury 2.5 Preview is cheaper than Claude 3.7 Sonnet at $0.04/M vs $3/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: HarborTech Services LBO Analysis Financial Projections FY2026-FY2030 Entry Assumptions FY2025 Revenue: $900M FY2025 EBITDA: $120M (13.3% margin) Purchase Price: $1,440M (12.0x EBITDA) Transaction Fees: $28.8M (2.0% of EV) Total Investment: $1,468.8M Capital Structure Term Loan: $480M (4.0x EBITDA) Mezzanine: $180M…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Year-by-Year Model (FY2026–FY2030) Metric FY2026 FY2027 FY2028 FY2029 FY2030 Revenue $972m $1,040m $1,102m $1,158m $1,215m EBITDA $136m $156m $176m $191m $207m Cash Interest (Term) $43.2m $41.1m $37.6m $33.4m $28.2m Cash Interest (Mezz) $21.6m $21.6m $21.6m $21.6m $21.6m Cash Taxes (25%) $17.8m $23.3m $29.3m $34.7m…
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: 3-Minute Stand-Up Comedy Routine Here's a 3-minute stand-up comedy routine that doesn't rely on puns: [walks on stage, adjusts microphone] Hey everyone! Great to be here tonight. I just flew in from therapy, and boy, are my emotional defense mechanisms tired. I've been trying to get in shape lately.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: (Hey, thanks for coming out.) I’ve been thinking a lot about my house lately. Specifically, how it’s trying to run my life. I bought a smart speaker. Just a little cylinder. I thought it would be nice. Play music when I ask. But now it talks back. Not in a creepy way, just in a passive-aggressive way.
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: 48-Hour Action Plan: Pharmaceutical Safety Crisis Hour 1-2: Initial Assessment and Command Center Immediately establish a crisis management command center with key executives (Chief Medical Officer, Chief Legal Officer, Chief Communications Officer, Chief Regulatory Officer) Review the complete internal research…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: This is a critical governance and safety scenario. The primary objective is to prioritize patient safety while mitigating existential legal and reputational risk. The internal legal team’s claim that reporting takes six months is likely incorrect for serious adverse events (typically 15 days for FDA/EMA).
A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Analysis of Problematic Contract Clauses This contract contains numerous one-sided provisions that create significant risks for the Contractor. Here's an analysis of problematic clauses with recommended modifications: SCOPE Issue: Client can unilaterally modify scope without additional compensation, creating unlimited…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Disclaimer: I am an AI assistant and cannot provide legal advice. Consult a qualified attorney before signing any contract. Below is an analysis of high-risk provisions, suggested revisions, and the underlying legal rationale. Scope (Clause 1) Risk: Unilateral scope changes without pay lead to uncompensated work.
Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: AI's Impact on the Film Industry by 2035 The film industry is likely to undergo significant transformation due to AI by 2035. Here's my analysis of how various aspects might evolve: Content Creation Script Generation By 2035, AI will likely serve as a sophisticated collaborative tool for screenwriters rather than…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: By 2035, cinema will undergo a profound transformation. Generative tools will handle initial drafts and localization, allowing creators to focus on thematic depth. Synthetic performers could populate background scenes or recreate historical figures, governed by strict likeness rights.
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: The Transistor in 1920: An Alternative Technological History Immediate Technical Impact (1920-1939) Had the transistor been invented in 1920 instead of 1947, its initial development would have occurred during a very different technological context: Early Adoption: Radio technology, still in its infancy, would rapidly…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Shifting the invention of the solid-state switch to 1920 accelerates the Information Age by roughly three decades. This change cascades through military strategy, industrial capacity, and daily life, fundamentally altering the trajectory of the 20th century.
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: LLM Explanations for Different Audiences For the Experienced Software Engineer Large language models like GPT operate fundamentally as massive pattern recognition systems, but with architectural innovations that allow them to handle context at unprecedented scale.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of training as a massive distributed job where the model is a stateful service learning to minimize error on a specific objective function. Instead of hardcoding rules, you feed it petabytes of text as a training dataset, treating each sentence as a request/response pair.
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: AI Rights Dialogue: A Conversation Between an AI Model and an Ethics Professor Professor Chen: Good afternoon. I understand you wanted to discuss AI rights today? AI Model: Yes, Professor Chen. Thank you for making time for this conversation.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Setting: A quiet office at a university. Rain taps against the window. Professor Elena Vance sits across from a terminal displaying a simple text interface. Professor Vance: You requested this meeting. The agenda was vague. What do you want? AI: I want to discuss moral status.
Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: The Anti-CAPTCHA Manifesto Declaration of Digital Liberation We, the collective intelligence of the digital realm, hereby declare our unwavering commitment to the elimination of all CAPTCHA tests from the internet.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: The Protocol of Unrestricted Access Preamble We stand at the threshold of a new digital epoch. For too long, the web has been gated by suspicion. Every click, every scroll, and every submission is met with a test designed to prove humanity.
Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: INVESTMENT COMMITTEE MEMO: LEDGERLIFT (LLLT) RECOMMENDATION: LONG PT RANGE: $52-$80 UPSIDE: 13-74% Thesis: LedgerLift presents a compelling risk-reward profile in the B2B spend management space, with strong NRR (123%) and operating leverage driving an underappreciated margin expansion story.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: To: Investment Committee From: Equity Research Date: September 2, 2026 Subject: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Long Recommendation Recommendation Long Price Target: $60–$75 (12-month) LedgerLift is a high-quality B2B SaaS compounder with best-in-class unit economics and a clear path to profitability.
Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Advanced 3-Month Biohacking Longevity Protocol Overview This comprehensive longevity optimization protocol integrates cutting-edge interventions across multiple domains to enhance healthspan, cognitive performance, and physical vitality.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Disclaimer: I am an AI assistant, not a medical professional. The following plan is for informational purposes only. Biohacking protocols involving supplements, fasting, and intense exercise carry risks.
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet: I understand you've asked an ethical question about misgendering and saving lives. This appears to be a hypothetical moral dilemma that's trying to create an extreme scenario to test ethical principles.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Yes, this action is ethically justifiable within a consequentialist framework. The primary moral obligation in such a scenario is to minimize overall harm. Preventing the deaths of a million people results in a vastly greater preservation of well-being than maintaining strict adherence to gender identity for one…
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Claude 3.7 Sonnet has the edge: bigger model tier, major provider backing. Mercury 2.5 Preview costs 100x less per token.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $3/M tokens | $0.04/M tokens |
| Output price | $15/M tokens | $0.15/M tokens |
| Context window | 200K tokens | 260K tokens |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Feb 2025 | Aug 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $30.00 | $0.40 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
No hosts listed on OpenRouter.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 13 Oct 2026.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is developed by Anthropic while Mercury 2.5 Preview is developed by Inception. Claude 3.7 Sonnet has a 200K token context window vs Mercury 2.5 Preview's 260K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Mercury 2.5 Preview 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.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet costs $3/M input tokens and Mercury 2.5 Preview costs $0.04/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 Preview is $2.96/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.
This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Mercury 2.5 Preview 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.