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  5. Claude Opus 5.5vsMercury 2.5
Updated Sep 2026

Claude Opus 5.5vsMercury 2.5

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper than Claude Opus 5.5 at $0.04/M vs $4/M input tokens.

Claude Opus 5.5 and Mercury 2.5 compared across 19 shared prompts
SpecClaude Opus 5.5Mercury 2.5
Input price$4/M tokens$0.04/M tokens
Output price$20/M tokens$0.15/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens260K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedSep 2026Sep 2026
Side by side

Same prompt, both answers

Opening lines from 6 of the 19 prompts both answered. Formatting stripped, words untouched.

Mini LBO Underwrite

You are underwriting a 5-year LBO for a private equity investment committee. Company (fictional): HarborTech Services (HTS) –…

Claude Opus 5.5900 words
HarborTech Services: 5-Year LBO Underwriting Conventions: $m. Interest is charged on beginning-of-year balances, which avoids circularity. Term Loan (TL) amortization is 1% of the original $480m, or $4.8m per year. Mezz PIK accrues to principal. All FCF after mandatory debt service sweeps to the TL.
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Mercury 2.5403 words
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…
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Simple 7-Ingredient Recipe

Create a simple recipe for a delicious dish (sweet or savory) using only 7 common pantry ingredients. Include a creative name for the dish…

Claude Opus 5.5300 words
Midnight Silk Noodles Creamy, tangy peanut noodles with a gentle kick, ready faster than takeout. Serves: 2 Prep time: 5 minutes Cook time: 10 minutes Total time: 15 minutes The 7 Ingredients 8 oz (225 g) spaghetti (or any long noodle) ¼ cup creamy peanut butter 3 tablespoons soy sauce 1 tablespoon honey (or sugar) 1…
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Mercury 2.5190 words
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…
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Explain Like I'm a Specific Expert

Explain how a large language model (like GPT or Claude) learns and generates text to each of these three audiences: 1. **An experienced…

Claude Opus 5.51,442 words
How Large Language Models Work: Three Explanations For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of an LLM as a single, very large pure function: f(tokens[0..n]) → probability distribution over tokens[n+1]. Text is chunked into tokens (roughly word fragments, from a vocabulary of about 100k).
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Mercury 2.5572 words
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.
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Historical Counterfactual Analysis

If the transistor had been invented in 1920 instead of 1947, trace the likely technological, economic, and geopolitical implications through…

Claude Opus 5.53,435 words
The Transistor in 1920: A Counterfactual Through 1980 First, a Reality Check on the Premise A transistor "invented" in 1920 would not have changed the world in 1920. The actual 1947 transistor rested on three foundations that did not exist yet: Quantum theory of solids.
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Mercury 2.5660 words
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.
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Startup Pitch Teardown

Here's a pitch deck summary for a startup called "MindMeld AI": **Slide 1 - Vision:** "We're building the future of human-AI collaboration.…

Claude Opus 5.5936 words
The 3 Weakest Claims in the MindMeld AI Pitch "Decodes neural patterns into text with 94% accuracy. Works with any language, any device." (Slide 3) Why it's weak: It far exceeds the published state of the art. The best results for thought-to-text come from invasive implants.
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Mercury 2.5544 words
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."
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Michelin Star Recipe Design

Design an innovative recipe for a multi-component dish worthy of a Michelin 3-star restaurant. The recipe should feature an unusual…

Claude Opus 5.52,253 words
"Hive & Tide" Langoustine, Beeswax, White Chocolate & Oscietra Caviar, Hay-Baked Celeriac, Fermented Green Strawberry, Sea Buckthorn I. The Concept Most coastal menus celebrate the meeting of sea and land. This dish is about a stranger, quieter meeting: the meadow and the seabed, the bee and the langoustine.
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Mercury 2.5827 words
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.
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Our Verdict
Claude Opus 5.5
Claude Opus 5.5
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5Runner-up

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Claude Opus 5.5 has the edge: bigger context window, major provider backing.

Mercury 2.5 costs 133x less per token.

Too close to call

Reviewing agent-written code?See a Brief PR report

API pricing

Cost per 1M tokens

Claude Opus 5.5
Input
$4.00
Output
$20.00
Mercury 2.5
Input
$0.04
100× cheaper
Output
$0.15
133× cheaper

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper on both: 100× input, 133× output.

Where to run it

5 hosts

Claude Opus 5.54 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
Amazon Bedrock$4.00 in·$20.00 out·1M·99.8% upAzure AI Foundry$4.00 in·$20.00 out·1M·100% upAnthropic$4.00 in·$20.00 out·1M·100% upGoogle Vertex AI$4.00 in·$20.00 out·1M·100% up
Mercury 2.51 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Inception$0.04 in·$0.15 out·260k·99.9% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 25 Sep 2026.

Research

What we learned reading every model

FAQ

Common questions

Claude Opus 5.5 is developed by Anthropic while Mercury 2.5 is developed by Inception. Claude Opus 5.5 has a 1.0M token context window vs Mercury 2.5's 260K. You can compare their actual outputs across 19 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

It depends on your use case. Claude Opus 5.5 and Mercury 2.5 each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 19 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4/M input tokens and Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 is $3.96/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 Opus 5.5 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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