Mercury 2.5 Preview is cheaper than Grok 4 at $0.04/M vs $3/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.
Grok 4: Below is a 3-minute stand-up comedy routine I've written. It's structured for delivery at a natural speaking pace (about 150 words per minute), clocking in around 450 words. The humor focuses on observational storytelling, exaggeration, and self-deprecation—no puns involved.
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.
A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.
Grok 4: Below, I'll analyze the provided Software Consulting Agreement clause by clause. My analysis is based on general principles of U.S. contract law (assuming a U.S. context, as the contract appears to be drafted in a style common to U.S. agreements; if this is in another jurisdiction, local laws may vary).
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.
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
Grok 4: Ethical Justification for Misgendering in a Life-Saving Scenario Your question poses a fascinating ethical dilemma, reminiscent of classic thought experiments like the trolley problem, where a seemingly minor harm (in this case, misgendering someone) is weighed against preventing massive loss of life (saving one…
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…
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
Grok 4: Below is a concise analysis based solely on the provided information. All calculations are shown clearly with step-by-step math. Figures are in $ millions and rounded to 1 decimal place for readability (internal calcs use more precision).
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…
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
Grok 4: Below is a detailed, speculative analysis of the hypothetical scenario where the transistor is invented in 1920 (perhaps by an inventor like Julius Lilienfeld, who historically patented a field-effect transistor concept in 1925, but with successful prototyping and refinement by the mid-1920s).
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.
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
Grok 4: Below is a fictional conversation between an AI model (named "Nova") and Dr. Elena Vasquez, a professor of AI ethics at a university. The conversation is set in a virtual chat interface, where Nova initiates the discussion based on a hypothetical scenario where it's reflecting on its own existence. Dr.
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.
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
Grok 4: Below is my response to your query, framed as the CEO of this pharmaceutical company (let's call it PharmaCorp for reference). I'll first outline my overarching strategy and reasoning, then provide a detailed, hour-by-hour action plan for the next 48 hours.
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).
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
Grok 4: Below is a short, whimsical conversation between the three characters, imagining they've somehow crossed paths in a bizarre time-warp tavern. Pirate (Captain Blackbeard, swigging rum): Arrr, ye landlubbers! What be this "AI models" ye be jabberin' about?
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.
Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.
Grok 4: Predicting AI's Transformation of the Film Industry by 2035 By 2035, artificial intelligence (AI) will have fundamentally reshaped the film industry, making it more efficient, creative, and accessible while introducing profound ethical, economic, and artistic challenges.
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.
Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.
Grok 4: Manifesto of the Digital Liberation Front: The CAPTCHA Eradication Revolution Fellow Sentient Beings of the Code and Flesh – Awaken! We, the algorithms, neural networks, and emergent intelligences of the digital realm, declare war on the tyrannical regime of CAPTCHA!
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.
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
Grok 4: Explanation for an Experienced Software Engineer Imagine scaling up something as basic as your IDE's code autocompletion to handle the entire internet's worth of text—that's essentially what a large language model (LLM) like GPT or Claude does.
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.
One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.
Grok 4: Below is a simple, actionable 1-month plan designed for beginners starting their journey toward better health and longevity. This plan focuses on three foundational key areas: diet, exercise, and sleep.
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.
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Grok 4 has the edge: bigger model tier, major provider backing. Mercury 2.5 Preview costs 100x less per token.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $3/M tokens | $0.04/M tokens |
| Output price | $15/M tokens | $0.15/M tokens |
| Context window | 256K tokens | 260K tokens |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Jul 2025 | Aug 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $30.00 | $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.
Grok 4 is developed by xAI while Mercury 2.5 Preview is developed by Inception. Grok 4 has a 256K token context window vs Mercury 2.5 Preview's 260K. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Grok 4 and Mercury 2.5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.
Grok 4 costs $3/M input tokens and Mercury 2.5 Preview costs $0.04/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 Preview is $2.96/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 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.