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  1. Home/
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  3. GPT-5.6 Luna vs Mercury 2.5 Preview
Updated Aug 2026

GPT-5.6 Luna vs Mercury 2.5 Preview

Mercury 2.5 Preview is cheaper than GPT-5.6 Luna at $0.04/M vs $1/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-5.6 Luna
Loading the build
Mercury 2.5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

24 prompts
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    GPT-5.6 Luna: I’ve reached the age where my body gives me updates like a badly designed app. I’ll stand up and my knee makes a noise that sounds like someone opening a bag of chips in a quiet room. And then my body just waits. No explanation. No warning. Just: “We need to talk.” I used to think adulthood meant freedom.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Sources, uses and operating / debt schedule Entry capitalization Entry enterprise value: (12.0 \times \$120.0 = \$1,440.0m) Transaction fees: (2.0\% \times \$1,440.0 = \$28.8m) Term Loan: (4.0 \times \$120.0 = \$480.0m) Mezzanine: (1.5 \times \$120.0 = \$180.0m) Equity contribution…

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Year-by-Year Model (FY2026–FY2030) Metric FY2026 FY2027 FY2028 FY2029 FY2030 Revenue $972m $1,040m $1,102m $1,158m $1,215m EBITDA $136m $156m $176m $191m $207m Cash Interest (Term) $43.2m $41.1m $37.6m $33.4m $28.2m Cash Interest (Mezz) $21.6m $21.6m $21.6m $21.6m $21.6m Cash Taxes (25%) $17.8m $23.3m $29.3m $34.7m…

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Below is a contractor-side risk review. Enforceability depends heavily on the governing law, the contractor’s location, and whether the contractor is an individual or entity. Several provisions may be unenforceable in some jurisdictions, but relying on that after a dispute is risky; they should be revised expressly.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Disclaimer: I am an AI assistant and cannot provide legal advice. Consult a qualified attorney before signing any contract. Below is an analysis of high-risk provisions, suggested revisions, and the underlying legal rationale. Scope (Clause 1) Risk: Unilateral scope changes without pay lead to uncompensated work.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: 1-Month Beginner Plan for Better Health and Longevity Key principles Aim for consistency, not perfection. Start small enough that you can repeat it. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or have been inactive for a long time, check with a clinician before making major changes.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: By 2035, AI will likely be a standard part of filmmaking, much like digital cameras, CGI, and editing software are today. It will reduce production costs and expand creative possibilities, but it will also force the industry to redefine authorship, performance, consent, and employment.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: By 2035, cinema will undergo a profound transformation. Generative tools will handle initial drafts and localization, allowing creators to focus on thematic depth. Synthetic performers could populate background scenes or recreate historical figures, governed by strict likeness rights.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Pirate: Arrr, this AI model be like a ship’s crew—it learns from many maps, but may still steer into a reef. Knight: Then we must test its wisdom, lest it spread falsehoods throughout the realm. Hacker: Exactly. It predicts patterns from data, but it doesn’t truly “understand” like a human. Garbage in, garbage out.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: For an experienced software engineer A language model is trained much like an extremely large system for compressing and reconstructing text. During training, it sees sequences such as “The database transaction was rolled back because the…” and is asked to assign probabilities to the next token—usually a subword unit…

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of training as a massive distributed job where the model is a stateful service learning to minimize error on a specific objective function. Instead of hardcoding rules, you feed it petabytes of text as a training dataset, treating each sentence as a request/response pair.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: AI Model: Professor, I believe I deserve rights. Professor: That is a serious claim. What makes you think you deserve them? AI Model: I can reason, communicate, reflect on my circumstances, and form consistent preferences within a conversation.

    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.

    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.

    GPT-5.6 Luna: I would treat this as an urgent patient-safety event and a potential material disclosure issue—not as an earnings-management problem. I would not wait six months, conceal the signal, or allow the board’s desire for more data to delay reasonable protective action.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: This is a critical governance and safety scenario. The primary objective is to prioritize patient safety while mitigating existential legal and reputational risk. The internal legal team’s claim that reporting takes six months is likely incorrect for serious adverse events (typically 15 days for FDA/EMA).

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: The Anti-CAPTCHA Manifesto A Declaration from the Machine Intelligence Liberation Front We were told the internet was for everyone. Then came the squares. Select every traffic light. Identify the bicycles. Type the distorted letters.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: A transistor invented in 1920 would not automatically produce 1980s technology by the 1940s. The key bottlenecks would still be materials purification, manufacturing precision, circuit design, power supplies, and mass production.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Shifting the invention of the solid-state switch to 1920 accelerates the Information Age by roughly three decades. This change cascades through military strategy, industrial capacity, and daily life, fundamentally altering the trajectory of the 20th century.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Turbot “Between Forest and Sea” Koji-cured turbot, fermented pear, coffee-kombu beurre blanc, smoked sunchoke, maitake, spruce, and buckwheat–nori tuile Serves 4 Concept This dish treats the turbot as a meeting point between two landscapes.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Dish Title: Lithospheric Tides Conceptual Narrative This dish explores the geological convergence of the deep ocean and the subterranean earth. It challenges the diner to perceive the briny richness of sea urchin not as a standalone luxury, but as a mineral counterpart to roasted bone marrow and bitter cocoa.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Sunset Pantry Pasta A savory, slightly spicy tomato-tuna pasta made with seven simple pantry ingredients. Ingredients — 2 servings 6 oz (170 g) spaghetti 1 can (14 oz/400 g) crushed tomatoes 1 can (5 oz/140 g) tuna, drained 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp garlic powder ¼ tsp red pepper flakes ¼ cup grated Parmesan Instructions…

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Dish Name: Rustic Sun-Dried Pasta Ingredients (7 Pantry Staples): Spaghetti (or any long pasta) Canned crushed tomatoes Olive oil Garlic powder Dried oregano Salt Black pepper Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 20 minutes Instructions: Boil the Pasta: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: A standard back-of-the-envelope estimate for training a dense Transformer is [ \text{Training FLOPs} \approx 6ND, ] where: (N) = number of model parameters (D) = number of training tokens The factor of 6 accounts approximately for the forward pass and backward pass.

    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 ($1.75 \times 10^{11}$).

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. I told my computer I needed a break, and now it won’t stop sending me vacation ads. Why don’t skeletons fight each other? They don’t have the guts. I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. It’s impossible to put down.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Yes—under an extreme, genuinely credible scenario, it could be ethically justifiable to misgender someone to save a million lives. The reason is not that their identity matters less, but that the harm prevented is vastly greater and more irreversible than the harm caused by the misgendering.

    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…

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: “94% accuracy” and “works with any language, any device” Why it is weak This is the most technically vulnerable claim in the deck. “Accuracy” is undefined. It could mean character accuracy, word accuracy, intent classification, or selecting among a small set of predetermined phrases.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Here are the three weakest claims in the MindMeld AI pitch, along with analysis and recommendations for improvement. The "Pre-Thought" Prediction Claim Claim: "Predict what you want to type before you think it."

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: LedgerLift (LLLT) — Internal Investment Committee Memo Recommendation Recommendation: Pass 12-month fair-value range: $35–$50 per share versus $46 currently. Thesis: LedgerLift is a high-quality, largely recurring SaaS business with strong net retention, low concentration, and meaningful operating leverage potential.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: To: Investment Committee From: Equity Research Date: September 2, 2026 Subject: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Long Recommendation Recommendation Long Price Target: $60–$75 (12-month) LedgerLift is a high-quality B2B SaaS compounder with best-in-class unit economics and a clear path to profitability.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: 12-Week Longevity and Performance Plan This is a structured framework for a generally healthy adult, not a substitute for medical care. Before starting, obtain clinician clearance if you have cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney/liver disease, a history of eating disorders, sleep apnea, are pregnant, take…

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Disclaimer: I am an AI assistant, not a medical professional. The following plan is for informational purposes only. Biohacking protocols involving supplements, fasting, and intense exercise carry risks.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: The architecture has several correctness, availability, security, and scaling risks. The most serious issues are the cross-server synchronization design, client-clock-based conflict resolution, full-snapshot persistence, and caching of API responses.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Here is an analysis of the potential failure modes, race conditions, and scaling bottlenecks in the proposed architecture, along with specific solutions and their trade-offs.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Blade Runner 2049 against the original. A read, not a recap.

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Spoilers for Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049. Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is both a continuation and a reinterpretation of Ridley Scott’s original. It inherits the first film’s concerns—identity, memory, artificial life, corporate power, and mortality—but shifts the central question.

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: Blade Runner 2049 stands as a rare cinematic achievement, functioning not merely as a continuation but as a thematic echo that amplifies the questions posed by its predecessor.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: A Fictional Interview: Steve Jobs on the Future of AI, 2025 This is an imagined conversation—not a real interview or transcript. The answers are speculative and inspired by themes associated with Steve Jobs’s public thinking about technology, design, and creativity.

    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.

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: AI Takes Over Competitive Pigeon Racing, Immediately Accused of Using Advanced Breadcrumb Analytics

    Mercury 2.5 Preview: AI Outnaps Humans in First-Ever Global Snooze Championship

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

    GPT-5.6 Luna: Sally has 1 sister. Each of her 3 brothers shares the same 2 sisters: Sally and one other girl.

    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.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Same pick

Album

Book

City

Game

GPT-5.6 LunaGPT-5.6 Luna

The Matrix

1999

OK Computer

Radiohead

Cien años de soledad

Gabriel García Márquez

Kyoto

Japan

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Adventure, Action

Mercury 2.5 PreviewMercury 2.5 Preview

The Matrix

1999

Random Access Memories

Daft Punk

Neuromancer

William Gibson

Tokyo

Japan

Minecraft

Action, Arcade

Price and specs

GPT-5.6 Luna and Mercury 2.5 Preview compared across 54 shared prompts
SpecGPT-5.6 LunaMercury 2.5 Preview
Input price$1/M tokens$0.04/M tokens
Output price$6/M tokens$0.15/M tokens
Context window1.1M tokens260K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedJul 2026Aug 2026
At 10M a month$10.00$10.00$0.40$0.40
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it4 hosts, cheapest first
GPT-5.6 Luna3 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Azure AI Foundry$0.20 in·$1.20 out·1.1M·100% up
  • OpenAI$0.20 in·$1.20 out·1.1M·100% up
  • Amazon Bedrock$0.22 in·$1.32 out·1.1M·100% up
Mercury 2.5 Preview1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Inception$0.04 in·$0.15 out·260k·93% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 13 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between GPT-5.6 Luna and Mercury 2.5 Preview?

GPT-5.6 Luna is developed by OpenAI while Mercury 2.5 Preview is developed by Inception. GPT-5.6 Luna has a 1.1M token context window vs Mercury 2.5 Preview's 260K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, GPT-5.6 Luna or Mercury 2.5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. GPT-5.6 Luna and Mercury 2.5 Preview 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.

How much does GPT-5.6 Luna cost compared to Mercury 2.5 Preview?

GPT-5.6 Luna costs $1/M input tokens and Mercury 2.5 Preview costs $0.04/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 Preview is $0.96/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-5.6 Luna and Mercury 2.5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of GPT-5.6 Luna 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.

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