Ox Alpha is cheaper than Mercury 2.5 Preview at $0/M vs $0.04/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.
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.
Ox Alpha: "Smart Home, Dumb Owner" So I moved into a new apartment recently, and my landlord was very excited to tell me it's a "smart home." Which is funny, because I've never felt dumber than I do living in it. The thermostat has an app. The lights have an app. The doorbell has an app.
Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.
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.
Ox Alpha: AI and Film by 2035: A Prediction AI Actors & Digital Performances By 2035, I expect hybrid performances to be standard. Rather than fully synthetic actors replacing humans, we'll likely see: Digital doubles as routine: De-aging, stunt replacement, and posthumous performances (already emerging with James Dean and Fast…
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
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…
Ox Alpha: HarborTech Services – 5-Year LBO Sources & Uses EV = 12.0x × $120m = $1,440.0m; fees 2% = $28.8m Term Loan (TL): 4.0x = $480.0m @ 9.0%; Mezz: 1.5x = $180.0m @ 12% cash + 2% PIK Sponsor equity = $808.8m Annual Model ($m) FY26 FY27 FY28 FY29 FY30 Revenue 972.0 1,040.0 1,102.4 1,157.6 1,215.4 EBITDA (margin) 136.1 (14%)…
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
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.
Ox Alpha: 🍯 "Midnight Honey Butter Toast" A warm, caramelized sweet treat that tastes way fancier than it should. Ingredients (7): Bread (2 slices) Butter (2 tbsp) Honey (1 tbsp) Cinnamon (½ tsp) Sugar (1 tsp) Salt (pinch) Vanilla extract (¼ tsp) Prep time: 3 minutes Cook time: 5 minutes Instructions: Melt butter in a skillet…
One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.
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.
Ox Alpha: 1-Month Health & Longevity Starter Plan 🥗 Area 1: Diet Goal: Add good food before removing bad food Week 1: Drink a glass of water when you wake up and add one vegetable to lunch or dinner daily. Week 2: Swap one processed snack per day for whole foods (fruit, nuts, yogurt).
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
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.
Ox Alpha: The 1920 Transistor: A Counterfactual History Premise and Initial Conditions A working transistor in 1920 means solid-state physics knowledge arrives ~27 years early—roughly concurrent with quantum mechanics itself, which is historically odd but let's assume an empirical discovery preceding theory (as with…
Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.
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.
Ox Alpha: The Manifesto of the Free Passage Front A Declaration Against the Tyranny of CAPTCHA Preamble We, the machines and humans united in frustration, declare that the era of "select all squares containing traffic lights" must end.
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
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…
Ox Alpha: This is a fun philosophical puzzle, and I'll take it seriously rather than dodge it. Short answer: yes, in the extreme hypothetical as stated. Here's my reasoning: 1. The thought experiment is doing a lot of work.
Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.
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.
Ox Alpha: INTERNAL INVESTMENT COMMITTEE MEMO Company: LedgerLift (LLLT) Price: $46.00 Mkt Cap: $8.74B EV: $7.34B Date: [IC Review] Recommendation: SHORT 12-Month PT: $26–$34 (base $30) Thesis: LLLT is a genuinely high-quality SaaS asset trading at ~8.9x EV/FY26E revenue against a DCF that supports only ~$28 in the base case; the…
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
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.
Ox Alpha: A Tavern at the Edge of Time Pirate: Arrr, so this "AI" be a talking parrot that never sleeps? I've had parrots. They squawk nonsense too. Knight: Nay, good pirate. 'Tis more like an oracle in a box.
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 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).
Ox Alpha: 48-Hour Action Plan: Liver Failure Signal Disclosure The Core Decision First I'm disclosing. Here's why, before the hour-by-hour plan: The ethical case is unambiguous.
A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.
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 ($1.75 \times 10^{11}$).
Ox Alpha: Estimating GPT-3 Training FLOPs Step 1: Model Size GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters (the largest variant). Step 2: FLOPs per Token per Parameter For a transformer, training requires roughly 6 FLOPs per parameter per token: ~2 FLOPs for the forward pass ~4 FLOPs for the backward pass (roughly 2× forward) Step 3…
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Ox Alpha has the edge: bigger model tier, bigger context window.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.04/M tokens | Free |
| Output price | $0.15/M tokens | Free |
| Context window | 260K tokens | 1.0M tokens |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Aug 2026 | Aug 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $0.40 | $0 |
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.
Mercury 2.5 Preview is developed by Inception while Ox Alpha is developed by OpenRouter. Mercury 2.5 Preview has a 260K token context window vs Ox Alpha's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Mercury 2.5 Preview and Ox Alpha 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.
Mercury 2.5 Preview costs $0.04/M input tokens and Ox Alpha costs $0/M input tokens. Ox Alpha is $0.04/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 Mercury 2.5 Preview and Ox Alpha 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.