Mercury is cheaper than GPT-4 at $10/M vs $30/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
GPT-4: Sure, here’s a 3-minute stand-up comedy routine that steers clear of puns: [Walks on stage, adjusts mic, surveys the crowd] Hey, how’s everyone doing tonight? Yeah? Good. I’m glad you’re here. I just want to start by saying... I’m not a “cool” person. I’ve tried, but I’m not.
Mercury: Title: The Art of Being Unorganized [Opening] Hey everyone! So, I was thinking about how my life is like a well-organized library... except instead of books, it's filled with random socks and expired coupons. And instead of a librarian, I have a cat who thinks she's in charge.
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
GPT-4: Dish Name: Hearty Baked Beans Fiesta Ingredients: 2 cans of baked beans 1 large onion 3 cloves of garlic 1 bell pepper 1 can of sweet corn 2 tablespoons of olive oil Salt & pepper to taste Instructions: Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Dice the onion, bell pepper, and mince the garlic.
Mercury: Golden Chickpea & Sweet Potato Stew Prep time: 10 min Cook time: 25 min Total: 35 min Ingredients (7 pantry staples) 1 cup canned chickpeas, drained & rinsed 1 medium sweet potato, peeled & diced (≈ 1 cup) 1 small onion, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced ½ cup coconut milk (or any plant‑based milk) 2 tsp curry…
One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.
GPT-4: Title: 1-Month Plan for Better Health and Longevity Week 1 - Establishing a Healthy Diet 1.1: Start Eating Whole Foods: Begin by gradually replacing processed foods in your diet with whole foods. This may include fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains.
Mercury: 1‑Month Health & Longevity Starter Plan (Designed for absolute beginners – no fancy gear, no extreme diets, just doable habits that fit into a normal week.) 1️⃣ Focus Area: Balanced Nutrition Week Goal Simple, Beginner‑Friendly Actions 1 Get the basics down • Hydrate: Aim for 8‑10 cups (≈2 L) of water per day.
Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.
GPT-4: 3-Month Longevity Plan Dietary Protocols Month 1: Ketogenic Diet This diet is high in fats, moderate in protein, and low in carbohydrates. It helps in burning fat more effectively. Breakfast: 2 eggs, avocado, and mixed vegetables. Lunch: Grilled salmon with a side of asparagus. Dinner: Stir-fried chicken with broccoli.
Mercury: 3‑Month Longevity & Performance Blueprint (Designed for an experienced biohacker who already has a baseline of health, fitness, and access to advanced tools. This is a general framework; always verify with a qualified health professional before making major changes.)
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
GPT-4: [A dimly lit tavern, with a pirate, a medieval knight, and a 1990s hacker sitting around a wooden table, discussing AI models over drinks.] Pirate: "Arrr, what be this sorcery ye call AI models? Some kind o' treasure map, marked with ones and zeroes?" Knight: "Nay, good pirate!
Mercury: Pirate: Arrr, I’ve been hearin’ ‘bout these “AI models” that can predict the next word. Sounds like a treasure map for the mind, doesn’t it? Knight: Hail, Captain! In my time, we relied on scrolls and the wisdom of scholars. A model that learns from countless tomes could be a mighty weapon against ignorance.
A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.
GPT-4: Failure Modes: Single Point of Failure: If PostgreSQL database fails, the whole system will be unavailable. Solution: Implement a multi-master or master-slave replication for the PostgreSQL database. This will provide redundancy and high availability.
Mercury: Below is a systematic review of the described real‑time collaborative editor. For each problem I list: What can go wrong (failure mode, race condition, bottleneck) Why it matters (impact on correctness, latency, availability) A concrete fix (what to change or add) Trade‑offs (cost, complexity, new failure modes, etc.)
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
GPT-4: Day 1: 8 AM-10 AM: Convene an emergency meeting with your core leadership team. This team includes the heads of Legal, Regulatory Affairs, Medical, Research and Development, Finance, and Communications. Brief them on the situation and ask for their initial input and strategies for managing the situation.
Mercury: 48‑Hour Action Plan (CEO‑Level) Time (UTC) Action Who Leads Key Deliverables / Outcomes Rationale 0–2 h Secure the facts – Convene an emergency “Safety & Compliance” meeting with the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Chief Legal Officer (CLO), Chief Risk Officer (CRO), and the Head of Regulatory Affairs (RA).
Blade Runner 2049 against the original. A read, not a recap.
GPT-4: Certainly! Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve, serves as a profound continuation of Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner. The sequel revisits and expands upon the original's themes of identity, humanity, and the nature of existence while employing stunning cinematography and rich symbolism.
Mercury: Blade Runner 2049 arrives a decade after the 1982 classic, yet it feels both a continuation and a reimagining of the same speculative universe. Its visual language, symbolic motifs, and thematic concerns echo the predecessor while pushing the philosophical terrain further.
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
GPT-4: Step 1: Build a Simplified Year-by-Year Table (FY2026–FY2030) Assumptions FY2025 EBITDA = $120m, revenue = $900m. Revenue grows at the given rates, and EBITDA margins expand as outlined. Capex = 3% of revenue. ΔNWC = 0.5% of incremental revenue. Taxes = 25% × max(0, EBITDA - cash interest).
Mercury: 1. Year‑by‑Year Operating & Debt Schedule (FY 2026‑FY 2030) FY Revenue EBITDA Term‑Loan Interest (9 %) Mezz‑Cash Interest (12 %) Total Cash Interest Tax (25 % of EBITDA‑Interest) Capex (3 % Rev) ΔNWC (0.5 % ΔRev) Term‑Loan Amort.
Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.
GPT-4: Dish Name: Symphony of Scarlet Prawn and Yuzu Conceptual Narrative: This dish is a harmonious interplay of land and sea, with the sweetness of scarlet prawns, a gem of the deep sea, and the refreshing, fragrant citrus notes of yuzu fruit, a treasure from the land.
Mercury: Dish Title: Eclipse of the Ocean & Forest Concept: A multi‑component, molecular‑gastronomy inspired plate that juxtaposes the briny depth of the sea with the earthy richness of the forest.
Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.
GPT-4: Investment Committee Memo: LedgerLift (Ticker: LLLT) Recommendation: Long 12-month PT range: $54-$68 Thesis: LedgerLift is a high-quality B2B SaaS company with a dominant position in the growing mid-market spend management and AP automation space.
Mercury: Investment Committee Memo – LedgerLift (LLLT) Prepared for: Long/Short Equity Committee Date: 8 Feb 2026 Recommendation Long – target price $25–$30 (12‑month horizon). Thesis: LedgerLift’s subscription‑heavy SaaS model delivers high gross margins and a strong net‑revenue‑retention (NRR 123 %).
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
GPT-4: Experienced Software Engineer: How does a language model like GPT produce intelligent behavior? Think of it as a highly specialized function in your code. This function has been trained on a large amount of text data, and it's main goal is to predict the next word in a sentence given the previous words.
Mercury: 1. Experienced Software Engineer (Distributed‑Systems Background) A large language model (LLM) is essentially a massive, highly parallelized neural network that learns to predict the probability distribution over the next token in a sequence.
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| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $30/M tokens | $10/M tokens |
| Output price | $60/M tokens | $10/M tokens |
| Context window | 8K tokens | 32K tokens |
| Parameters | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Weights | Closed | — |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | May 2023 | Jun 2025 |
| HumanEval | 67.0% | 90.0% |
| At 10M a month | $300 | $100 |
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.
GPT-4 is developed by OpenAI while Mercury is developed by Inception. GPT-4 has a 8K token context window vs Mercury's 32K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. GPT-4 and Mercury 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.
GPT-4 costs $30/M input tokens and Mercury costs $10/M input tokens. Mercury is $20.00/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 GPT-4 and Mercury 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.