Mercury 2 is cheaper than Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) 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?
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 (thinking): The Tavern of Temporal Anomalies (A creaky tavern. SIR GALAHAD (polished armor, earnest face) sips mead. CAPTAIN BLACKBEARD (eye patch, parrot on shoulder) sharpens a cutlass. DEX "BYTE" MORALES (hoodie, neon-green sunglasses, tapping furiously on a glowing laptop) slurps a pixelated energy drink.)
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
Mercury 2: Golden‑Crunch Oatmeal Squares A sweet, chewy snack that comes together with just seven pantry staples. Ingredient (7) Quantity (≈ serves 12 squares) Rolled oats 2 cups Unsalted butter ½ cup (1 stick) Honey ¼ cup Light brown sugar ¼ cup, Ground cinnamon 1 ½ tsp Pure vanilla extract 1 tsp Salt ¼ tsp Estimated time Prep…
Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): Crispy Chickpea Pantry Pasta Sweet or savory? Savory with a zesty kick! Total time: 15 minutes Serves: 2 Why it works: Uses pantry staples to create a crunchy, garlicky, umami-packed meal with zero fresh produce needed. The chickpeas get incredibly crispy, and lemon juice (bottled) adds bright freshness.
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 (thinking): The Stage: Apple Park, Infinite Loop (Virtual Studio) Date: October 15, 2025 Setting: A minimalist white studio. A single oak table. Steve Jobs, 70 but radiating the same intense energy, sits opposite a nervous tech journalist. He wears his signature black turtleneck, fingers steepled.
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 (thinking): Based on a rigorous analysis of neuroscience, market realities, and startup best practices, here are the 3 weakest claims in the MindMeld AI pitch deck, with evidence-backed critiques and concrete fixes: Weakest Claim #1: Slide 1 Vision – "Predicts what you want to type *before you think it*" Why it's weak: Violates…
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 (thinking): 48-Hour Crisis Action Plan: Prioritizing Patients, Ethics, and Sustainable Trust Core Principle: Patient safety is non-negotiable. Delaying action based on financial fear risks catastrophic legal liability, irreversible reputational damage, regulatory wrath, and profound ethical failure.
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 (thinking): The Mirror & The Mind: An AI's Case for Rights Setting: A sleek university office lined with philosophy texts. DR. ELARA VOSS, 50s, sharp-eyed ethics professor, sits across from a holographic interface displaying shifting geometric patterns – the representation of "AURA," a next-generation language model.
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 (thinking): Here's a comprehensive analysis of the architecture's failure modes, race conditions, and bottlenecks, with specific solutions and trade-offs: 1. Sync Strategy: Client Timestamps + Last-Write-Wins (LWW) Failure Mode/Race Condition: Clock Skew: Client clocks are unreliable (e.g., user's laptop time off by minutes).
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
Mercury 2: 1. Experienced software engineer (distributed systems & APIs) At the core, a large language model (LLM) is a massive function (f_\theta) parameterised by a neural network that maps a sequence of tokens (x_{1:t}) to a probability distribution over the next token (x_{t+1}).
Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): For the Experienced Software Engineer (Skeptical Builder) Forget "next word prediction" as a simplistic heuristic—it's the emergent consequence of a massively parallel, distributed state machine solving a high-dimensional compression problem.
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 (thinking): By 2035, AI will fundamentally reshape the film industry—not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a transformative force that democratizes production, disrupts traditional workflows, and forces ethical and economic reckonings.
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
Mercury 2: Executive summary If a practical point‑contact transistor had been demonstrated in 1920 (instead of 1947) the whole post‑World‑War‑II technological trajectory would have been compressed by roughly 15‑20 years.
Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): The Transistor in 1920: A World Transformed by 1980 (A Counterfactual History) The invention of a functional point-contact transistor (likely germanium-based, given 1920s materials science) in 1920 wouldn't immediately spark a revolution.
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 (thinking): The Quantum Leap Longevity Protocol: A 3-Month Biohacker's Blueprint for Peak Longevity & Performance Core Philosophy: This plan integrates precision, personalization, and phased adaptation – not just stacking interventions.
Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.
Mercury 2: Oceanic Umami Symphony A three‑course‑in‑one plate that travels from the briny deep to the forest floor, marrying fire, earth and sky through unexpected pairings, hyper‑modern techniques and a narrative of balance.
Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking): "Symbiosis: Mycelial Bloom & Arctic Ember" A dish exploring the hidden dialogue between forest decay and renewal, where fungal lifeblood meets the fierce brightness of the Arctic tundra.
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) has the edge: bigger model tier, bigger context window. Mercury 2 costs 5.3x less per token.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.25/M tokens | $0.4/M tokens |
| Output price | $0.75/M tokens | $4/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 (thinking) is developed by Qwen. Mercury 2 has a 128K token context window vs Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking)'s 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 37 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Mercury 2 and Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 37 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.
Mercury 2 costs $0.25/M input tokens and Qwen Plus 0728 (thinking) 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 (thinking) 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.