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  5. Mercury 2.5vsMistral Large
Updated Sep 2026

Mercury 2.5vsMistral Large

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper than Mistral Large at $0.04/M vs $8/M input tokens.

Mercury 2.5 and Mistral Large compared across 20 shared prompts
SpecMercury 2.5Mistral Large
Input price$0.04/M tokens$8/M tokens
Output price$0.15/M tokens$24/M tokens
Context window260K tokens32K tokens
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedSep 2026Feb 2024
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) –…

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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Mistral Large643 words
1) Year-by-Year Table (FY2026–FY2030) (All figures in $ millions, rounded to nearest $1m) Metric FY2026 FY2027 FY2028 FY2029 FY2030 Revenue 972 1,040 1,102 1,157 1,215 EBITDA 136 156 176 191 207 Cash Interest (Term Loan) 43 40 37 34 31 Cash Interest (Mezz) 16 17 18 20 22 Total Cash Interest 59 57 55 54 53 Cash Taxes 19…
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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…

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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Mistral Large1,036 words
1. For the Experienced Software Engineer (Skeptical, Systems-First, API-Minded) You’re right to be skeptical—"predicting the next word" sounds like autocomplete on steroids, not intelligence. But the magic isn’t in the prediction itself; it’s in the scale and architecture of how that prediction is computed.
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Simple 7-Ingredient Recipe

Create a simple recipe for a delicious dish (sweet or savory) using only 7 common pantry ingredients. Include a creative name for the dish…

Mercury 2.5190 words
Pantry Pasta Primavera Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 15 minutes Servings: 2 Ingredients (7 Common Pantry Items) Pasta (spaghetti, penne, or fusilli) – 8 oz Canned crushed tomatoes – 1 can (14 oz) Olive oil – 3 tablespoons Garlic powder – 1 teaspoon Dried oregano – 1 teaspoon Parmesan cheese (grated) – ½ cup Salt and…
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Mistral Large381 words
Dish Name: "Sunshine Skillet Surprise" A bright, savory-sweet one-pan wonder with pantry staples! Ingredients (7 common pantry items): 1 can (15 oz) black beans (drained & rinsed) 1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes (or crushed tomatoes) 1 cup uncooked white rice (or instant rice for faster cooking) 1 small onion (or 1 tbsp…
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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…

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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Mistral Large3,007 words
The invention of the transistor in 1920—nearly three decades earlier than its actual debut in 1947—would have had profound and cascading effects on technology, economics, and geopolitics by 1980. Below is a detailed breakdown of the first-, second-, and third-order implications, organized by domain. 1.
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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…

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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Mistral Large1,177 words
Internal Investment Committee Memo: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Long/Short Consideration Prepared for: [Fund Name] Investment Committee Date: [Insert Date] 1. Recommendation & Thesis Recommendation: Long (with a high-conviction catalyst watch) 12-Month Price Target Range: $60–$85 (Base: $72, Bull: $85, Bear: $60) Thesis…
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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…

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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Mistral Large1,349 words
Michelin 3-Star Dish: *"Ocean’s Whisper & Earth’s Embrace" A symphony of contradictions—briny depths meet terranean warmth, where the ephemeral meets the eternal. Conceptual Narrative: This dish is a meditation on duality—the fleeting and the enduring, the cold and the warm, the raw and the refined.
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Our Verdict
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5
Mistral Large
Mistral LargeRunner-up

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Mercury 2.5 has the edge: newer, bigger context window.

Mercury 2.5 costs 160x less per token.

Too close to call

Reviewing agent-written code?See a Brief PR report

API pricing

Cost per 1M tokens

Mercury 2.5
Input
$0.04
200× cheaper
Output
$0.15
160× cheaper
Mistral Large
Input
$8.00
Output
$24.00

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper on both: 200× input, 160× output.

Where to run it

2 hosts

Mercury 2.51 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Inception$0.04 in·$0.15 out·260k·100% up
Mistral Large1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Mistral$2.00 in·$6.00 out·128k·99.9% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 22 Sep 2026.

Research

What we learned reading every model

FAQ

Common questions

Mercury 2.5 is developed by Inception while Mistral Large is developed by Mistral AI. Mercury 2.5 has a 260K token context window vs Mistral Large's 32K. You can compare their actual outputs across 20 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

It depends on your use case. Mercury 2.5 and Mistral Large 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.

Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04/M input tokens and Mistral Large costs $8/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 is $7.96/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 Mercury 2.5 and Mistral Large 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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