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  5. Mercury 2.5vsQwen3.8 Flash
Updated Sep 2026

Mercury 2.5vsQwen3.8 Flash

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper than Qwen3.8 Flash at $0.04/M vs $0.15/M input tokens.

Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3.8 Flash compared across 8 shared prompts
SpecMercury 2.5Qwen3.8 Flash
Input price$0.04/M tokens$0.15/M tokens
Output price$0.15/M tokens$0.47/M tokens
Context window260K tokens1.0M tokens
Weights—Closed
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedSep 2026Aug 2026
Side by side

Same prompt, both answers

Opening lines from 3 of the 8 prompts both answered. Formatting stripped, words untouched.

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…
Read the full answer
Qwen3.8 Flash147 words
Moon Halo Cookies A soft, golden sugar cookie with crisp edges and a tender center—made with just 7 pantry staples. Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 10 minutes Total time: 20 minutes Makes: About 16 cookies Ingredients 1/2 cup butter, softened 3/4 cup sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour…
Read the full answer

Beginner's Longevity Plan

Outline a simple, actionable 1-month plan for someone starting their journey towards better health and longevity. Focus on 3 key areas…

Mercury 2.5325 words
Here is a simple, actionable 1-month plan to kickstart your journey toward better health and longevity. This guide focuses on three foundational pillars: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep. Week 1: Awareness & Small Wins Goal: Build habits without overwhelming yourself.
Read the full answer
Qwen3.8 Flash368 words
1-Month Beginner Health & Longevity Plan Focus areas: Nutrition, Movement, Sleep Week 1: Build the basics Nutrition Add 1 serving of vegetables to 2 meals per day. Drink water with each meal. Choose protein at most meals: eggs, beans, tofu, chicken, fish, yogurt. Movement Walk 10–15 minutes daily.
Read the full answer

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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Qwen3.8 Flash983 words
For an experienced software engineer Training a large language model is not “just” making it guess the next word in isolation. It is fitting an enormous parameterized function to predict the next token conditioned on all previous tokens in a sequence.
Read the full answer
Our Verdict
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5
Qwen3.8 Flash
Qwen3.8 Flash

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

Mercury 2.5 costs 3.1x less per token.

Too close to call
API pricing

Cost per 1M tokens

Mercury 2.5
Input
$0.04
3.8× cheaper
Output
$0.15
3.1× cheaper
Qwen3.8 Flash
Input
$0.15
Output
$0.47

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper on both: 3.8× input, 3.1× output.

Where to run it

2 hosts

Mercury 2.51 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Inception$0.04 in·$0.15 out·260k·100% up
Qwen3.8 Flash1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Alibaba Cloud$0.15 in·$0.47 out·1M·100% 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 Qwen3.8 Flash is developed by Qwen. Mercury 2.5 has a 260K token context window vs Qwen3.8 Flash's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 8 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

It depends on your use case. Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3.8 Flash each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 8 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04/M input tokens and Qwen3.8 Flash costs $0.15/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 is $0.11/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 Qwen3.8 Flash 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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