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  5. Grok 4.6vsMercury 2.5
Updated Sep 2026

Grok 4.6vsMercury 2.5

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper than Grok 4.6 at $0.04/M vs $2/M input tokens.

Grok 4.6 and Mercury 2.5 compared across 20 shared prompts
SpecGrok 4.6Mercury 2.5
Input price$2/M tokens$0.04/M tokens
Output price$6/M tokens$0.15/M tokens
Context window500K tokens260K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedAug 2026Sep 2026
Side by side

Same prompt, both answers

Opening lines from 6 of the 20 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) –…

Grok 4.6579 words
Entry (end-FY2025) EV = 12.0 × $120m = $1,440.0m Fees = 2% × 1,440 = $28.8m (equity-funded) Uses = $1,468.8m Debt = 5.5× = $660.0m (TL $480.0m / Mezz $180.0m) Sponsor equity = $808.8m opening cash = $0 Convention: cash interest and PIK on beginning balances; 1% original TL amort = $4.8m/yr; optional sweep of all…
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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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Historical Counterfactual Analysis

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

Grok 4.6838 words
Early transistors (1920s–1930s) would accelerate electronics, communications, and computing by ~20–25 years relative to actual history, with compounding effects by WWII, but constrained by contemporaneous materials science, manufacturing, vacuum-tube infrastructure, and non-electronic fields like rocketry, chemistry…
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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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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…

Grok 4.6711 words
Lunar Embrace This dish evokes a moonlit Japanese coastline at the precise instant when receding tide exposes both ocean treasures and forest-floor secrets. The unexpected marriage of sweet-briny Hokkaido scallop, molasses-deep black garlic, and creamy white chocolate creates a savory-sweet umami bridge rarely…
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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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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…

Grok 4.61,096 words
1. Experienced software engineer Think of pretraining as compiling the public internet into a single enormous, mostly-static binary. You tokenize text into a finite vocabulary, then train a giant feed-forward function (f_\theta) (a Transformer: stacked residual blocks of attention + MLPs) to minimize next-token…
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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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Advanced Investment Memo (IC Memo)

You are writing an internal investment committee memo for a long/short equity fund. Company (fictional): LedgerLift (ticker: LLLT) – B2B…

Grok 4.6773 words
IC MEMO: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Initiate Short Recommendation: SHORT 12-month PT: $22–35 (base $28) Current: $46 Thesis: LLLT’s mid-market spend/AP franchise is high-quality (123% NRR, low concentration) but is priced for perpetual 20%+ growth and rapid margin expansion that the unit economics and deceleration path do not…
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Mercury 2.5735 words
To: Investment Committee From: Equity Research Date: September 22, 2026 Subject: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Initiation of Coverage Recommendation & Thesis Recommendation: Long 12-Month Price Target: $55 – $68 Thesis: LedgerLift offers a rare combination of high-quality SaaS unit economics (NRR 123%, CAC payback 18mo) and…
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Adversarial Contract Review

Here is a contract for a software consulting engagement: --- SOFTWARE CONSULTING AGREEMENT This Agreement is entered into between TechCorp…

Grok 4.61,013 words
This is not legal advice. Contract interpretation and enforceability vary by jurisdiction (e.g., California vs. Texas vs. EU), and a licensed attorney should review any real agreement. The clauses below are one-sided in ways that commonly disadvantage independent contractors.
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Mercury 2.5501 words
Here is an analysis of the contract clauses that pose significant risk to the contractor, along with suggested modifications and legal reasoning. Scope and Compensation (Clause 1) Risk: The client can expand the project indefinitely without paying extra.
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Our Verdict
Grok 4.6
Grok 4.6
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5Runner-up

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Grok 4.6 has the edge: bigger context window, major provider backing.

Mercury 2.5 costs 40x less per token.

Too close to call

Reviewing agent-written code?See a Brief PR report

API pricing

Cost per 1M tokens

Grok 4.6
Input
$2.00
Output
$6.00
Mercury 2.5
Input
$0.04
50× cheaper
Output
$0.15
40× cheaper

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper on both: 50× input, 40× output.

Where to run it

3 hosts, cheapest first

Grok 4.62 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
xAI$2.00 in·$6.00 out·500k·98.5% upAmazon Bedrock$2.20 in·$6.60 out·500k·100% up
Mercury 2.51 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Inception$0.04 in·$0.15 out·260k·100% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 23 Sep 2026.

Research

What we learned reading every model

FAQ

Common questions

Grok 4.6 is developed by xAI while Mercury 2.5 is developed by Inception. Grok 4.6 has a 500K token context window vs Mercury 2.5's 260K. You can compare their actual outputs across 20 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

It depends on your use case. Grok 4.6 and Mercury 2.5 each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 20 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

Grok 4.6 costs $2/M input tokens and Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 is $1.96/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 Grok 4.6 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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Model pages

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Grok 4.658 outputs, specs and price
Mercury 2.5 logo
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