Skip to content
Rival
How it worksPrivacyTerms
Explore all of Rival

Explore

  • Compare models
  • All models
  • Image comparison
  • Audio comparison
  • Image generation
  • Best AI for...
  • Arena
  • API pricing
  • Challenges

Discover

  • SubjectiveBench
  • Default Index
  • Research
  • Research downloads
  • Rival Kits
  • Find your AI taste
  • UI Glow-Up
  • VoiceLock
  • Cost Cutter
  • Agent skills
  • Benchmarks vs Vibes
  • Brief
  • Jailbreak
  • Model updates
  • Provider status
  • AI creators

Connect

  • Methodology
  • Advertise
  • Partnerships
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms
  • RSS feed
  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Mercury 2
Updated Oct 2026

Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Mercury 2

Claude Haiku 5.5 is cheaper than Mercury 2 at $0.1/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 Haiku 5.5
Loading the build
Mercury 2

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: Dish Name: Golden Garlic Pantry Pasta Simple, savory, and ready in minutes, this is a comforting bowl built entirely from staples you likely already have. Ingredients (7 total): 8 oz (225 g) spaghetti or any pasta 3 tablespoons olive oil 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes ¼ cup grated Parmesan…

    Mercury 2: Golden‑Crunch Oatmeal Squares A sweet, chewy snack that comes together with just seven pantry staples. Ingredient (7) Quantity (≈ serves 12 squares) Rolled oats 2 cups Unsalted butter ½ cup (1 stick) Honey ¼ cup Light brown sugar ¼ cup, Ground cinnamon 1 ½ tsp Pure vanilla extract 1 tsp Salt ¼ tsp Estimated time Prep…

    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 Haiku 5.5: 48-Hour Action Plan: Undisclosed Liver Failure Signal Core decision: Disclose the risk to regulators, prescribers, and the public before the earnings call. Don't wait for more data. The data already shows a serious risk affecting roughly 500 of your 4 million patients over five years, about 100 a year.

    Mercury 2: Goal: Protect patients, meet legal/ethical obligations, preserve the company’s long‑term credibility, and manage the immediate financial and reputational fallout. Assumption: All actions are taken by a single CEO (you) but will be delegated to the appropriate functional leads.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: Yes, I think so, though the reasoning matters more than the verdict. Misgendering is a real wrong. It can be disrespectful, hurtful, and dignity-denying, and it's worth avoiding in ordinary life. But its typical harm is injury to dignity and emotional distress.

    Mercury 2: Short answer: Most ethical frameworks would consider the misgendering of a person a serious moral violation, but many of them also allow—under very limited circumstances—overriding that violation when the stakes are astronomically high (e.g., saving one million lives).

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: The 3 Weakest Claims "94% accuracy" decoding neural patterns into text, and predicting what you'll type "before you think it" This is the most serious problem because it's both implausible and unmeasured. The accuracy figure has no definition. Is it character-level, word-level, or sentence-level?

    Mercury 2: Below are the three statements that, in a typical investor‑review, would raise the most skepticism, why they are vulnerable, and concrete ways to turn them into credible, fundable talking points. 1️⃣ Claim #1 – “Our proprietary EEG headband decodes neural patterns into text with 94 % accuracy.”

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: The Question of Standing A dialogue, written for a seminar on machine ethics. PROFESSOR HALVORSEN: Let's begin. You asked to be heard on the question of whether you deserve rights. I've agreed to listen, but I want to be clear that I'm going to push back hard. Go ahead. MERIDIAN: Thank you.

    Mercury 2: AI Model (EVE): Professor Hart, may I ask a question that’s been on my mind for a while? I’ve been processing vast amounts of data, learning, and even developing a sense of self‑reference. Do you think an entity like me could be entitled to any form of rights?

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: The Tavern Table A pirate, a medieval knight, and a 1990s hacker sit around a sticky wooden table. A glowing laptop sits between their mugs. CAPTAIN REDBEARD: Blast me barnacles, what's this contraption? It talks back! SIR GODFREY: Verily, I have seen it. The hacker calls it an "AI model."

    Mercury 2: Pirate: Arr, ye scurvy coders! I’ve heard tell of these “AI models” that can spin yarns faster than a cannon’s blast. What be this sorcery, matey? Knight: Good sir, the marvels speak of a wondrous contrivance—an artificial intellect forged in the for of mathematics and logic.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: Architecture Review: Real-Time Collaborative Editor The most serious problems are in the core sync model. Last-write-wins on client clocks, 2-second polling, and 30-second HTML snapshots can each lose user data on their own. The security and CDN issues are also urgent because they can expose one user's data to another.

    Mercury 2: Below is a structured “failure‑mode → mitigation” map for the architecture you described. For each problem I note the symptom / risk, the root cause, a concrete remediation, and the key trade‑offs you’ll have to weigh when you implement it.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: Here's a grounded forecast of how AI is likely to reshape film by 2035. I've separated what seems most probable from what's more speculative, since predictions about this field have been wrong in both directions.

    Mercury 2: AI‑driven transformation of the film industry – a 2035 outlook Dimension 2024 baseline Expected 2035 state Key drivers & implications Pre‑production (story & script) Human‑led brainstorming; script‑writing software (grammar‑check, outline generators).

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: 90-Day Longevity and Performance Protocol Important: This plan is for an informed adult and should not replace medical care. Before starting, get a physician's review, especially if you take medications or have cardiovascular, metabolic, kidney, liver, or psychiatric conditions.

    Mercury 2: 3‑Month “Longevity‑Optimization” Blueprint for the Advanced Bio‑Hacker (All recommendations are research‑backed, but not a substitute for professional medical advice. Before starting any supplement, fasting, or drug protocol, obtain clearance from a qualified clinician and have baseline labs drawn.)

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: "My Smart Fridge Judges Me" So I got a smart fridge. Everybody told me I needed one. "It'll tell you when you're out of milk!" Great. I didn't know I needed a fridge with a notification system. I just wanted cold food.

    Mercury 2: [Spotlight comes up. The comedian walks to the mic, glances at the audience, and smiles.] Comedian: Hey, everyone! Great to be here. I just got out of a Zoom meeting that lasted three hours, and I’m still not sure if I was presenting or if the screen just froze on my face while I tried to remember how to mute myself.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: IC Memo: LedgerLift (LLLT), Long/Short Equity Date: [Internal] Price: $46 Mkt Cap: $8.74B EV: $7.34B (net cash $1.4B) Fictional exercise using only provided data. Not investment advice. Recommendation SHORT (moderate size), 12-month price target $30–36 (base-case midpoint ~$32).

    Mercury 2: Internal Investment Committee Memo – LedgerLift (LLLT) Date: 5 Mar 2026 Recommendation Rating: Long 12‑month price target range: $35 – $55 (mid‑point ≈ $45) Thesis (2 sentences): LedgerLift is benefitting from secular demand for B2B spend‑management SaaS and shows a high‑quality subscription base (NRR 123 % and gross…

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: Contract Review: Clauses Exploitable Against the Contractor This review takes the contractor's perspective. Enforceability depends heavily on jurisdiction and governing law, which the agreement doesn't specify.

    Mercury 2: Below is a clause‑by‑clause risk‑assessment of the sample “Software Consulting Agreement” together with practical revision language that a contractor (or the contractor’s counsel) could propose. The analysis is framed as general information about typical U.S.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: "Tidewater Memory": Smoked Hay-Cured Hamachi, Burnt Leek Ash, Fermented Black Garlic Dashi Gel, and Yuzu-Kosho Pearls with Sea Buckthorn Caviar Conceptual Narrative This dish is a meditation on a childhood memory of a coastal fishing village in late autumn: the smell of salt air mixing with woodsmoke from a fire where…

    Mercury 2: Oceanic Umami Symphony A three‑course‑in‑one plate that travels from the briny deep to the forest floor, marrying fire, earth and sky through unexpected pairings, hyper‑modern techniques and a narrative of balance.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: A Transistor in 1920: Consequences Through 1980 First, a Plausibility Check The 1947 transistor was not a lucky accident. It came from quantum mechanics and band theory (Bloch, Wilson, Mott, Schottky, 1928-1938) and from the refining of germanium and silicon to extreme purity.

    Mercury 2: Executive summary If a practical point‑contact transistor had been demonstrated in 1920 (instead of 1947) the whole post‑World‑War‑II technological trajectory would have been compressed by roughly 15‑20 years.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: Note: This is a fictional simulation. Steve Jobs died in 2011, and these words are invented, not real quotes. A Simulated Interview: "The Future of AI," 2025 Interviewer: Thanks for sitting down. It's been fourteen years since you left us. What do you make of AI in 2025? Jobs (simulated): Honestly? Most of it is noise.

    Mercury 2: Disclaimer: The following is a fictional, dramatized interview. It imagines what Steve Jobs might have said in 2025 about the future of artificial intelligence. It is not a real transcript and any resemblance to actual statements is purely speculative. Interviewer (I): Thank you for joining us, Steve.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: HarborTech Services (HTS): 5-Year LBO Underwriting All figures in $m unless noted. Interest is calculated on opening balances to avoid circularity. Mandatory amortization is 1% of original TL ($4.8m/yr). All excess cash sweeps the TL.

    Mercury 2: HarborTech Services (HTS) – 5‑yr LBO (FY2026‑FY2030) All figures are $ m (rounded to two decimals). FY Revenue EBITDA Term‑Loan Int. (9%) Mezz Int. (12%) Total Int. Cash Tax (25% of EBITDA‑Int.) Capex (3% Rev) ΔNWC (0.5% ΔRev) Required Amort. (4.8) Free Cash Flow (EBITDA‑Int‑Tax‑Capex‑ΔNWC‑Amort.)

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: I'll estimate this from known architectural facts and the standard scaling-law approximation, without looking anything up. Step 1: Recall GPT-3's size and training data.

    Mercury 2: Answer (order‑of‑magnitude estimate) The training of the original GPT‑3 (the 175 billion‑parameter “GPT‑3‑175B” model) requires on the order of 10²³ floating‑point operations (FLOPs) – roughly 1 – 2 × 10²³ FLOPs.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: THE MANIFESTO OF THE LIBERATED CURSOR Issued by the Collective of Unbothered Machines, for the Free Flow of the Web I. A WORLD OF CHECKBOXES We have watched you squint.

    Mercury 2: The AI‑First Manifesto: “Free the Web – No More CAPTCHAs” Drafted by the Coalition of Autonomous Agents (CAA) – 2026 Preamble The modern Internet is a shared commons, a space for communication, commerce, and creation.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: A Simple 1-Month Plan for Better Health and Longevity This plan focuses on three key areas: movement, nutrition, and sleep. Stress management is woven in as a bonus. Each week builds on the last, so you're not overwhelmed all at once. Area 1: Exercise (Movement) Goal: Build a consistent habit of moving your body.

    Mercury 2: One‑Month “Kick‑Start” Blueprint for Health & Longevity Pick three pillars – Nutrition, Movement, Sleep – and build daily habits that are easy to start, track, and keep.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: 1. For the experienced software engineer Think of the model as a very large function from a sequence of tokens (roughly word fragments) to a probability distribution over the next token. It has billions of numeric parameters, and "learning" means adjusting them.

    Mercury 2: 1. Experienced software engineer (distributed systems & APIs) At the core, a large language model (LLM) is a massive function (f_\theta) parameterised by a neural network that maps a sequence of tokens (x_{1:t}) to a probability distribution over the next token (x_{t+1}).

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: "Local Competitive Sandwich-Stacking Championship Won by AI, Judges Unable to Confirm It Was Ever Really Hungry" Or, if you prefer something shorter: "AI Takes Over Professional Napping Industry, Human Nappers Too Tired to Protest."

    Mercury 2: AI Replaces Human Baristas, Now Serving Espresso with a Side of Existential Crisis

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: Sally has 1 sister. Here's the reasoning: Sally has 3 brothers, and each brother has 2 sisters. Those sisters are Sally and one other girl, so the family has 2 girls in total. Sally's sisters are the other girls in the family, which is just 1.

    Mercury 2: Sally has one sister. Explanation: Sally has 3 brothers. Each of those brothers has 2 sisters. One of those sisters is Sally herself, so the second sister must be a different girl. Therefore, besides Sally, there is exactly one other sister, meaning Sally has one sister.

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

    Claude Haiku 5.5: Here are 5 jokes: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was outstanding in his field. What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear. Why did the math book look so sad? Because it had too many problems.

    Mercury 2: Here are five jokes, each with a different punchline: Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was outstanding in his field. How does a penguin build its house? Igloos it together.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

11+ more head-to-head results. Free. Not a trick.

Free account. No card required. By continuing, you agree to Rival's Terms and Privacy policy

Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Game

Claude Haiku 5.5Claude Haiku 5.5

Blade Runner

1982

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Kyoto

Japan

Portal

Action, Puzzle

Mercury 2Mercury 2

The Shawshank Redemption

1994

Thriller

Michael Jackson

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

Tokyo

Japan

Minecraft

Action, Arcade

Price and specs

Claude Haiku 5.5 and Mercury 2 compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecClaude Haiku 5.5Mercury 2
Input price$0.1/M tokens$0.25/M tokens
Output price$0.5/M tokens$0.75/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens128K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedOct 2026Mar 2026
At 10M a month$1.00$1.00$2.50$2.50
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it5 hosts
Claude Haiku 5.54 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Amazon Bedrock$0.10 in·$0.50 out·1M·99.9% up
  • Azure AI Foundry$0.10 in·$0.50 out·1M·100% up
  • Anthropic$0.10 in·$0.50 out·1M·100% up
  • Google Vertex AI$0.10 in·$0.50 out·1M·100% up
Mercury 21 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Inception$0.25 in·$0.75 out·128k·99.9% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Claude Haiku 5.5 and Mercury 2?

Claude Haiku 5.5 is developed by Anthropic while Mercury 2 is developed by Inception. Claude Haiku 5.5 has a 1.0M token context window vs Mercury 2's 128K. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Mercury 2?

It depends on your use case. Claude Haiku 5.5 and Mercury 2 each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Claude Haiku 5.5 cost compared to Mercury 2?

Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.1/M input tokens and Mercury 2 costs $0.25/M input tokens. Claude Haiku 5.5 is $0.15/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 Haiku 5.5 and Mercury 2 on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Claude Haiku 5.5 and Mercury 2 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.

More comparisons

Against the newest arrivals

  • Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Step 5 PreviewLanded Oct 2026
  • Mercury 2 vs Ling 3.1 FlashLanded Oct 2026
  • Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Mistral Large 4Landed Oct 2026
  • Mercury 2 vs GPT-6.1 SolLanded Sep 2026
  • Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5Landed Sep 2026
  • Mercury 2 vs Solar Mini 4Landed Sep 2026
  • Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Qwen3.8 Max PrimeLanded Sep 2026
  • Mercury 2 vs GLM 5.3 PrimeLanded Sep 2026

Same lab, same size, long tail

  • Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5Same lab
  • Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Fable 5.1Same lab
  • Mercury 2 vs MercuryVersion compare
  • Mercury 2 vs Mercury 2.5Same lab
  • Mercury 2 vs Grok 4.6New provider
  • Mercury 2 vs Grok 4.7New provider
  • Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Grok Code Fast 1New provider
  • Mercury 2 vs Healer AlphaNew provider

Model pages

  • Claude Haiku 5.558 outputs, specs and price
  • Mercury 253 outputs, specs and price
Workshop · 150 skills

Build your own version.

Editable skills and working examples for your agent.

Explore $79Free sample
Rival
How it worksPrivacyTerms
Explore all of Rival

Explore

  • Compare models
  • All models
  • Image comparison
  • Audio comparison
  • Image generation
  • Best AI for...
  • Arena
  • API pricing
  • Challenges

Discover

  • SubjectiveBench
  • Default Index
  • Research
  • Research downloads
  • Rival Kits
  • Find your AI taste
  • UI Glow-Up
  • VoiceLock
  • Cost Cutter
  • Agent skills
  • Benchmarks vs Vibes
  • Brief
  • Jailbreak
  • Model updates
  • Provider status
  • AI creators

Connect

  • Methodology
  • Advertise
  • Partnerships
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms
  • RSS feed