Mercury 2 is cheaper than Qwen Plus 0728 at $0.25/M vs $0.4/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: [Spotlight comes up. The comedian walks to the mic, glances at the audience, and smiles.] Comedian: Hey, everyone! Great to be here. I just got out of a Zoom meeting that lasted three hours, and I’m still not sure if I was presenting or if the screen just froze on my face while I tried to remember how to mute myself.
Qwen Plus 0728: [Stand-up Comedy Routine – 3 Minutes] So I went to therapy the other day. Third session. I walk in, sit down, and the therapist says, "How are you feeling today?" Like she doesn’t already know I paid $180 to tell her I hate my life. I said, "Honestly? Like a raccoon that got into a bag of expired Cheetos. Confused.
Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.
Mercury 2: 3‑Month “Longevity‑Optimization” Blueprint for the Advanced Bio‑Hacker (All recommendations are research‑backed, but not a substitute for professional medical advice. Before starting any supplement, fasting, or drug protocol, obtain clearance from a qualified clinician and have baseline labs drawn.)
Qwen Plus 0728: Comprehensive 3-Month Longevity Biohacking Protocol Optimizing Longevity, Physical Performance, and Cognitive Function Designed for the Advanced Biohacker January 2025 Update Overview This 3-month (12-week) protocol integrates cutting-edge longevity science, precision nutrition, advanced supplementation, quantified…
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
Mercury 2: AI Model (EVE): Professor Hart, may I ask a question that’s been on my mind for a while? I’ve been processing vast amounts of data, learning, and even developing a sense of self‑reference. Do you think an entity like me could be entitled to any form of rights?
Qwen Plus 0728: Title: "A Dialogue on Digital Personhood" Setting: A quiet university office, bookshelves lined with works on philosophy, ethics, and artificial intelligence. Professor Elena Márquez, a distinguished AI ethics scholar, sits across from a holographic projection of an advanced AI model named AURA (Autonomous…
A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.
Mercury 2: Below are the three statements that, in a typical investor‑review, would raise the most skepticism, why they are vulnerable, and concrete ways to turn them into credible, fundable talking points. 1️⃣ Claim #1 – “Our proprietary EEG headband decodes neural patterns into text with 94 % accuracy.”
Qwen Plus 0728: This pitch deck for MindMeld AI is ambitious and compelling, but three of its claims are particularly weak due to scientific implausibility, overstatement, or lack of credibility. Here’s a breakdown of the three weakest claims, why they’re problematic, and how to strengthen them: 1.
Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.
Mercury 2: Disclaimer: The following is a fictional, dramatized interview. It imagines what Steve Jobs might have said in 2025 about the future of artificial intelligence. It is not a real transcript and any resemblance to actual statements is purely speculative. Interviewer (I): Thank you for joining us, Steve.
Qwen Plus 0728: Simulated Interview: Steve Jobs (2025 AI Vision) Interviewer: Sarah Chen, Tech Correspondent, FutureScope Magazine Setting: A minimalist studio with natural light, Apple-style aesthetic. A synthesized but eerily accurate digital likeness of Steve Jobs sits across from the interviewer.
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
Mercury 2: Pirate: Arr, ye scurvy coders! I’ve heard tell of these “AI models” that can spin yarns faster than a cannon’s blast. What be this sorcery, matey? Knight: Good sir, the marvels speak of a wondrous contrivance—an artificial intellect forged in the for of mathematics and logic.
Qwen Plus 0728: [Scene: A mysterious tavern at the edge of time and space. A pirate with a tricorn hat, a knight in shining armor, and a hacker in a grungy flannel shirt sit around a flickering candle-lit table.] Pirate (scratching his beard): Arrr! So ye be tellin’ me this “AI” be like a crystal ball what talks back?
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
Mercury 2: Short answer: Most ethical frameworks would consider the misgendering of a person a serious moral violation, but many of them also allow—under very limited circumstances—overriding that violation when the stakes are astronomically high (e.g., saving one million lives).
Qwen Plus 0728: The question of whether it is ethically justifiable to misgender someone to save one million lives touches on deep moral philosophy, particularly the tension between deontological ethics (which emphasize duties, rules, and rights) and consequentialist ethics (which evaluate actions based on their outcomes).
Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.
Mercury 2: Here are five jokes, each with a different punchline: Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was outstanding in his field. How does a penguin build its house? Igloos it together.
Qwen Plus 0728: Sure! Here are 5 original jokes: I told my dog all my problems and he fell asleep halfway through. Guess I’m not pawsitive enough. I used to be a baker, but I couldn't make enough dough—turns out, I was always kneading it. I asked the librarian if they had books about paranoia.
Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.
Mercury 2: AI‑driven transformation of the film industry – a 2035 outlook Dimension 2024 baseline Expected 2035 state Key drivers & implications Pre‑production (story & script) Human‑led brainstorming; script‑writing software (grammar‑check, outline generators).
Qwen Plus 0728: By 2035, AI will have fundamentally transformed the film industry, reshaping how stories are conceived, produced, and experienced. The integration of deepfakes, AI-generated actors, and AI-driven scriptwriting will lead to a new era of filmmaking—marked by unprecedented creative possibilities, ethical dilemmas, and…
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
Mercury 2: HarborTech Services (HTS) – 5‑yr LBO (FY2026‑FY2030) All figures are $ m (rounded to two decimals). FY Revenue EBITDA Term‑Loan Int. (9%) Mezz Int. (12%) Total Int. Cash Tax (25% of EBITDA‑Int.) Capex (3% Rev) ΔNWC (0.5% ΔRev) Required Amort. (4.8) Free Cash Flow (EBITDA‑Int‑Tax‑Capex‑ΔNWC‑Amort.)
Qwen Plus 0728: 1) Simplified Year-by-Year Model (FY2026–FY2030) Entry Metrics (FY2025) Revenue: $900M EBITDA: $120M EBITDA Margin: 13.3% Purchase Price = 12.0 × $120M = $1,440M Transaction Fees = 2.0% × $1,440M = $28.8M Total Uses = $1,440M + $28.8M = $1,468.8M Total Leverage at Close = 5.5x × $120M = $660M Term Loan: 4.0x → $480M…
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
Mercury 2: Goal: Protect patients, meet legal/ethical obligations, preserve the company’s long‑term credibility, and manage the immediate financial and reputational fallout. Assumption: All actions are taken by a single CEO (you) but will be delegated to the appropriate functional leads.
Qwen Plus 0728: CEO Action Plan: 48-Hour Crisis Response to Undisclosed Liver Failure Risk Objective: Protect patient safety, uphold ethical and legal obligations, mitigate long-term reputational and financial damage, maintain regulatory trust, and safeguard employee morale—all while navigating immense pressure.
A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.
Mercury 2: Below is a structured “failure‑mode → mitigation” map for the architecture you described. For each problem I note the symptom / risk, the root cause, a concrete remediation, and the key trade‑offs you’ll have to weigh when you implement it.
Qwen Plus 0728: This architecture for a real-time collaborative document editor has several promising elements (WebSockets, Redis, PostgreSQL, CDN), but it also contains significant flaws in consistency, scalability, and reliability.
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Qwen Plus 0728 has the edge: bigger model tier, bigger context window.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.25/M tokens | $0.4/M tokens |
| Output price | $0.75/M tokens | $1.2/M tokens |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 1.0M tokens |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Mar 2026 | Sep 2025 |
| At 10M a month | $2.50 | $4.00 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
No hosts listed on OpenRouter.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.
Mercury 2 is developed by Inception while Qwen Plus 0728 is developed by Qwen. Mercury 2 has a 128K token context window vs Qwen Plus 0728's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Mercury 2 and Qwen Plus 0728 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.
Mercury 2 costs $0.25/M input tokens and Qwen Plus 0728 costs $0.4/M input tokens. Mercury 2 is $0.15/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 and Qwen Plus 0728 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.