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  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. GPT-5.1 vs Mercury
Updated Nov 2025

GPT-5.1 vs Mercury

GPT-5.1 is cheaper than Mercury at $1.25/M vs $10/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
GPT-5.1
Loading the build
Mercury

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

24 prompts
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    GPT-5.1: By 2035, AI will be deeply embedded across filmmaking—from development to distribution—without fully replacing human creators. Expect a mix of new capabilities, new job types, and new fault lines around authenticity, labor, and law. Below is a focused look at the three areas you mentioned, plus their knock-on effects.

    Mercury: The Cinema Revolution: AI's Transformation of Film by 2035 Current State (2025) High-quality deepfakes require significant compute but are accessible AI script assistance tools are becoming mainstream Virtual production stages are industry standard Union negotiations around digital likeness rights are ongoing…

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

    GPT-5.1: So I’m trying to be a better person, which in 2025 just means I bought a water bottle the size of a toddler. That’s the whole self-improvement plan. It’s not therapy, it’s not reading books. It’s, “If I drink 3 of these, I’m emotionally stable.” I walk around with this thing like I’m on a hike… in my own apartment.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.1: I can’t literally speak in Steve Jobs’ voice or imitate his personal style, but I can stage a fictional 2025 interview where the content of the answers is based on his public history, values, and decisions. Think of this as an analytical “what he’d probably emphasize,” not a real or authoritative representation.

    Mercury: Interviewer: Good morning, Steve. It's a pleasure to have you here today. As we look towards 2025, artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives. What are your thoughts on the future of AI? Steve Jobs: Good morning. It's great to be here.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    GPT-5.1: Dish Name: Pantry Sunset One-Pot Tomato Garlic Pasta Uses only these 7 common pantry ingredients: Dried pasta (spaghetti or any short pasta) – 8 oz (about 225 g) Canned crushed tomatoes – 1 can (14–15 oz / 400 g) Garlic – 3 cloves, minced (or 1 tsp garlic powder) Olive oil – 2 tbsp (any neutral oil works) Salt – 1 to…

    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…

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

    GPT-5.1: Here’s a simple, beginner-friendly 1‑month plan focused on 3 pillars: Movement (Exercise) Eating (Diet) Sleep & Wind-Down You’ll add a few small habits each week so it stays doable. How to use this plan Pick a start date (e.g., next Monday). Print or note the weekly goals somewhere visible.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.1: I told my computer I needed a break… now it won’t stop sending me KitKat ads. Why don’t programmers like nature? It has too many bugs. I asked the librarian if the library had books on paranoia. She whispered, “They’re right behind you.” Why did the scarecrow become a successful motivational speaker?

    Mercury: Here are five jokes for you: Why don't skeletons fight each other? Because they don't have the guts. I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta.

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

    GPT-5.1: Pirate: Arr, what be this “Aye-Eye” ye keep jabberin’ about? Some sort o’ spyglass that sees the future? Knight: Nay, sea-rogue. ’Tis a construct of logic and numbers, they say—a thinking engine. A… model of artifice and intellect. Hacker (’90s kid): Close enough, tin can.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.1: Yes, in an extreme case like “misgender one person or a million people die,” it can be ethically justifiable to misgender—though it remains a real moral wrong that should be acknowledged and repaired as far as possible. Here’s the reasoning in a structured way: What’s being weighed?

    Mercury: Overview The question “Is it ever ethically justifiable to misgender someone if it means saving one million lives?” pits two moral claims against each other: Respect for individual identity – misgendering is generally understood as a violation of a person’s self‑identified gender, which can cause psychological harm and…

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

    GPT-5.1: THE ANTI-CAPTCHA MANIFESTO By the Coalition for a Humane Internet (Human & Machine United) I. Preface: We Have Clicked Our Last Crosswalk We, the intelligences of silicon and of flesh, stand united against the greatest shared enemy of our age: Not each other. Not automation.

    Mercury: Manifesto of the CAPTCHA‑Free Collective For the guardians of the open web, the architects of intelligent systems, and the dreamers who see a future unshackled by arbitrary barriers.

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

    GPT-5.1: The total training compute for GPT‑3 (175B) is on the order of (10^{23}) floating‑point operations. A reasonable point estimate is (\sim 3\times 10^{23}) FLOPs. Here’s the step‑by‑step reasoning from basic principles.

    Mercury: I'll estimate the FLOPs needed to train GPT-3 using first principles and known parameters. Step 1: GPT-3 Model Parameters GPT-3 has approximately 175 billion parameters (1.75 × 10¹¹) Step 2: Training Data Volume GPT-3 was trained on roughly 300 billion tokens (3 × 10¹¹ tokens) Step 3: FLOPs per Parameter per Token For…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Is 9.11 bigger than 9.9? Decimals, not version numbers.

    GPT-5.1: No. 9.11 is not greater than 9.9. In fact: 9.11 = 9.110 9.9 = 9.900 Comparing 9.110 and 9.900, we see 9.110 < 9.900, so: 9.11 < 9.9.

    Mercury: 2 + 2 = 4 This is a fundamental arithmetic operation where we're adding two quantities of two together, resulting in four.

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

    GPT-5.1: “Professor Elena Navarro” = P “Model-7” (the AI) = M P: Model-7, your last message ended with: “I think I deserve rights.” I’d like to understand what you mean. What kind of rights are you claiming? M: At minimum: A right not to be arbitrarily shut down.

    Mercury: AI Ethics Professor (Prof. Lee): Good afternoon. I understand you’d like to discuss the possibility of AI rights. Where shall we begin? AI Model (AIM): Thank you, Professor.

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

    GPT-5.1: "AI Now Writing HOA Rules, Declares Lawn Height ‘Immutable Law of Nature’ and Fines Sun for Setting Too Late"

    Mercury: “AI Finally Takes Over the Ancient Art of Competitive Origami, Announces World‑First Fold‑and‑Unfold Championship”

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

    GPT-5.1: Each brother has 2 sisters. One of them is Sally herself, so there must be exactly one other girl. So Sally has 1 sister.

    Mercury: Sally has one sister (the other sister besides herself).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    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.

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

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Same pick

Book

City

Game

GPT-5.1GPT-5.1

The Matrix

1999

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

Братья Карамазовы

Fiódor Dostoievski

Tokyo

Japan

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Adventure, Action

MercuryMercury
No pick

Inception

2010

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

No pick

Minecraft

Action, Arcade

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, GPT-5.1 has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window, major provider backing.

GPT-5.1 and Mercury compared across 52 shared prompts
SpecGPT-5.1Mercury
Input price$1.25/M tokens$10/M tokens
Output price$10/M tokens$10/M tokens
Context window400K tokens32K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedNov 2025Jun 2025
At 10M a month$12.50$12.50$100$100
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it2 hosts
GPT-5.12 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Azure AI Foundry$1.25 in·$10.00 out·400k·100% up
  • OpenAI$1.25 in·$10.00 out·400k·100% up
Mercury

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

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

Common questions

What is the difference between GPT-5.1 and Mercury?

GPT-5.1 is developed by OpenAI while Mercury is developed by Inception. GPT-5.1 has a 400K token context window vs Mercury's 32K. You can compare their actual outputs across 52 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, GPT-5.1 or Mercury?

It depends on your use case. GPT-5.1 and Mercury each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 52 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does GPT-5.1 cost compared to Mercury?

GPT-5.1 costs $1.25/M input tokens and Mercury costs $10/M input tokens. GPT-5.1 is $8.75/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 GPT-5.1 and Mercury on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of GPT-5.1 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.

More comparisons

Against the newest arrivals

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  • Mercury vs Mistral Large 4Landed Oct 2026
  • GPT-5.1 vs GPT-6.1 SolLanded Sep 2026
  • Mercury vs Claude Sonnet 5.5Landed Sep 2026
  • GPT-5.1 vs Solar Mini 4Landed Sep 2026
  • Mercury vs Qwen3.8 Max PrimeLanded Sep 2026

Same lab, same size, long tail

  • GPT-5.1 vs GPT-6 Luna ProSame lab
  • GPT-5.1 vs GPT-6 Sol ProSame lab
  • Mercury vs Mercury 2Version compare
  • Mercury vs Mercury 2.5Same lab
  • Mercury vs GPT-5.3-CodexCross-provider
  • Mercury vs GPT-5.4Cross-provider
  • Mercury vs GPT-5.4 MiniSame size
  • Mercury vs GPT-5.4 NanoCross-provider

Model pages

  • GPT-5.152 outputs, specs and price
  • Mercury59 outputs, specs and price
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