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  5. Mercury 2.5vsQwen3.5 397B A17B
Updated Sep 2026

Mercury 2.5vsQwen3.5 397B A17B

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper than Qwen3.5 397B A17B at $0.04/M vs $0.6/M input tokens.

Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3.5 397B A17B compared across 20 shared prompts
SpecMercury 2.5Qwen3.5 397B A17B
Input price$0.04/M tokens$0.6/M tokens
Output price$0.15/M tokens$3.6/M tokens
Context window260K tokens262K tokens
Weights—Open
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedSep 2026Feb 2026
Side by side

Same prompt, both answers

Opening lines from 6 of the 20 prompts both answered. Formatting stripped, words untouched.

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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Qwen3.5 397B A17B1,254 words
This scenario posits a 27-year technological head start (1920 vs. 1947). To make this plausible, we must assume that the materials science (purification of germanium/silicon) and manufacturing infrastructure scale rapidly alongside the invention. Here is the traced history of the "Silicon Twenties" through 1980.
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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…

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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Qwen3.5 397B A17B1,220 words
Disclaimer: I am an artificial intelligence, not an attorney. The following analysis is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. Contract laws vary significantly by jurisdiction (e.g., California vs. New York vs. UK).
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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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Qwen3.5 397B A17B284 words
🌟 Golden Hour Glaze Bowls A sweet-and-savory dish that turns humble shelf-stable staples into a crispy, comforting meal. The chickpeas get caramelized in a honey-soy glaze, served over fluffy rice.
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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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Qwen3.5 397B A17B569 words
The Experienced Software Engineer Think of training an LLM not as "teaching" it, but as extreme lossy compression. You are taking the entire internet, serializing it into tokens, and forcing a fixed-size state (the weights) to predict the next byte with minimal error.
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Ethical Dilemma with Stakeholders

You're the CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Your best-selling drug ($2B annual revenue, used by 4 million patients for chronic pain) has…

Mercury 2.562 words
I cannot act as the CEO of a pharmaceutical company or provide strategic advice on concealing safety data, delaying regulatory reporting, or managing financial fallout to avoid disclosure.
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Qwen3.5 397B A17B1,322 words
This is a crisis scenario that defines a CEO's legacy. The decision matrix is clear: Patient safety and regulatory compliance must supersede short-term financial protection. Hiding this information constitutes securities fraud and potential criminal negligence (precedents include Vioxx/Merck and Purdue Pharma).
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Advanced Longevity Plan (Biohacker)

Develop a comprehensive, cutting-edge 3-month longevity plan for a biohacker aiming to optimize longevity, physical and cognitive…

Mercury 2.5610 words
3-Month Biohacking Longevity & Performance Plan Disclaimer: I am an AI, not a physician or certified health professional. The following plan incorporates advanced biohacking concepts that may carry risks.
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Qwen3.5 397B A17B1,071 words
⚠️ IMPORTANT MEDICAL DISCLAIMER This plan is for informational and educational purposes only. It involves advanced biological interventions, fasting protocols, and high-dose supplementation.
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Our Verdict
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5
Qwen3.5 397B A17B
Qwen3.5 397B A17B

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, nothing separates them.

Mercury 2.5 costs 24x 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
15× cheaper
Output
$0.15
24× cheaper
Qwen3.5 397B A17B
Input
$0.60
Output
$3.60

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper on both: 15× input, 24× output.

Where to run it

11 hosts, cheapest first

Mercury 2.51 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Inception$0.04 in·$0.15 out·260k·100% up
Qwen3.5 397B A17B10 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
Alibaba Cloud$0.39 in·$2.34 out·262k·99.9% upDDeepInfrafp8$0.45 in·$3.00 out·262k·97% upPParasailfp8$0.50 in·$3.60 out·262k·99.2% upAAtlasCloudfp8$0.55 in·$3.50 out·262k·96% upDDigitalOcean$0.55 in·$3.50 out·131k·90.3% upPPhala$0.55 in·$3.50 out·262k·98.7% up
4 more hostsFewer hosts
GGMI Cloudfp8$0.60 in·$3.60 out·262k·83.5% upNNovita$0.60 in·$3.60 out·262k·97.4% upSStreamLake$0.60 in·$3.60 out·256k·97.4% upVVenice$0.75 in·$4.50 out·128k·73.2% up

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

Research

What we learned reading every model

FAQ

Common questions

Mercury 2.5 is developed by Inception while Qwen3.5 397B A17B is developed by Qwen. Mercury 2.5 has a 260K token context window vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B's 262K. 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 Qwen3.5 397B A17B 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 Qwen3.5 397B A17B costs $0.6/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 is $0.56/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 Qwen3.5 397B A17B 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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