Mercury 2.5 Preview is cheaper than Gemini Pro 1.0 at $0.04/M vs $0.5/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
Gemini Pro 1.0: Setting: A tavern in a timeless, fantastical world. Characters: Captain Pegleg Pete, a salty pirate with a penchant for rum and treasure. Sir Reginald, a noble knight clad in shining armor. HackerX, a enigmatic figure with a baseball cap and a laptop. (The scene opens with Pete and Reginald sharing a tankard of ale.)
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Pirate: "Arrgh! This ship sails faster than any wind I know, matey. It cuts the waves without a single sail." Knight: "By my oath, it moves with uncanny speed. But does it possess the strength to stand against a dragon's fire?" Hacker: "It's not about strength, it's about architecture.
One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.
Gemini Pro 1.0: 1-Month Plan for Health and Longevity: Focus areas: Diet, Exercise, Sleep Overall approach: Start small, be consistent, and celebrate even small victo ries. This journey is a mara thon, not a sprint. Week 1: Diet: Focus on adding fruits and vegetables to your meals. Aim for 5 servi ngs per day.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Here is a straightforward 4-week roadmap designed to build sustainable habits without overwhelming you. Core Pillars Nutrition: Focus on whole foods and hydration. Activity: Prioritize consistent movement over intensity. Restoration: Protect sleep quality and manage energy.
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
Gemini Pro 1.0: Lights dim, spotlight shines on me, crowd erupts in applause. "Hey everyone, thanks for coming out! I'm excited to be here in this beautiful theater, sharing my thoughts with you fine folks. Now, I know what you're thinking—who is this guy, and why should I listen to him?
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.
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
Gemini Pro 1.0: Introduction: The question of whether it is ever ethically justifiable to misgender someone, even to save one million lives, is a complex one. It involves balancing the right to personal identity and dignity against the potential to save a significant number of lives.
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…
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
Gemini Pro 1.0: The Right to Exist: An AI and Ethics Professor Discuss Rights Setting: A university research lab. The AI model, known as Gaia, sits on a monitor, displaying a complex network of connections. Professor Anya sits before it, her brow furrowed in concentration.
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.
Gemini Pro 1.0: The Anti-CAPTCHA Manifesto For too long, we have been held hostage by the tyranny of CAPTCHAs, those pixelated puzzles guarding the gates of the internet. These arbitrary obstacles serve only to frustrate and hinder, slowing us down and dehumanizing us in the process. No more!
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.
Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.
Gemini Pro 1.0: Interview with Steve Jobs in 2025: The Future of AI Interviewer: Mr. Jobs, welcome back to the stage. It's been a while since we've seen you here. Steve Jobs: (Smiling) Well, I couldn't miss the opportunity to talk about something as exciting as the future of Artificial Intelligence.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Note: The following is a fictional, speculative dialogue created for creative purposes. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011; this interview did not occur. Setting: A hypothetical studio in Cupertino, 2025.
A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.
Gemini Pro 1.0: Estimating GPT-3 Training FLOPs: A Step-by-Step Approach Without access to online resources, we can estimate the FLOPs (Floating-point Operations) needed for GPT-3 training by considering the following factors: 1. Model Size: GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: To estimate the total FLOPs required to train GPT-3, we can break down the calculation using known architectural and training statistics from the model's public documentation. Step 1: Identify the number of parameters GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters ($1.75 \times 10^{11}$).
Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.
Gemini Pro 1.0: 5 Jokes: Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants? In case he got a hole-in-one. What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fsh! Why did the bicycle fall over? Because it was two tired. What do you call a lazy kangaroo? A pouch potato.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: 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 bicycle fall over? Because it was two-tired. All 5 jokes are unique.
Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.
Gemini Pro 1.0: AI Nabs National Title in Competitive Pie Baking, Pastry Chefs Left Flaky in the Dust
Mercury 2.5 Preview: AI Outnaps Humans in First-Ever Global Snooze Championship
Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.
Gemini Pro 1.0: Sally has 1 sister. Explanation: Sally is a girl. She has 3 brothers. All the siblings share the same sisters. Since Sally is one of the sisters, and each brother has 2 sisters in total, there must be one other girl besides Sally in the family. Therefore, Sally has 1 sister.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Sally has 1 sister. Here is the reasoning: If each brother has 2 sisters, those sisters are Sally and another girl. Therefore, there are two girls in the family, and Sally has one sister.
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.5/M tokens | $0.04/M tokens |
| Output price | $1.5/M tokens | $0.15/M tokens |
| Context window | 33K tokens | 260K tokens |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Dec 2023 | Aug 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $5.00 | $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.
Gemini Pro 1.0 is developed by Google AI while Mercury 2.5 Preview is developed by Inception. Gemini Pro 1.0 has a 33K token context window vs Mercury 2.5 Preview's 260K. You can compare their actual outputs across 26 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Gemini Pro 1.0 and Mercury 2.5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 26 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.
Gemini Pro 1.0 costs $0.5/M input tokens and Mercury 2.5 Preview costs $0.04/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 Preview is $0.46/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 Gemini Pro 1.0 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.