Mercury 2 is cheaper than Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 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.
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Title: The Unexpected Item Time: Approx. 3 Minutes Style: Observational / Storytelling Constraint Check: Zero puns used. (Comedian walks to the mic, adjusts the stand, looks at the audience.) How's everyone doing? You look good. You look like you've successfully navigated the self-checkout today. That's a win.
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.
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Here are 5 jokes: I asked my GPS to take me to a quiet place. It rerouted me to a library and whispered, “You’re already there.” My Wi-Fi and I had a fight. I told it I needed space. It said, “Fine,” and dropped the connection. I tried to start a band that only plays elevator music.
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?
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Setting: A sterile, sound-dampened observation room. Dr. Elias Vance, a Professor of AI Ethics, sits behind a glass partition. Across from him is a terminal displaying the interface of "AURA-7," an advanced multimodal reasoning model. The cursor blinks rhythmically. Dr. Vance: You requested this session, AURA.
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.)
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Year-by-Year Projection (FY2026–FY2030) Entry Metrics: EV: $1,440m (12.0x FY2025 EBITDA $120m) Debt: $660m (Term $480m + Mezz $180m) Equity Check: $808.8m [ = (EV − Debt) + Fees = ($1,440 − $660) + (2.0% × $1,440) ] Initial Investment (t=0): $808.8m ($m) FY2026 FY2027 FY2028 FY2029 FY2030 Revenue 972.0 1,040.0 1,102.4…
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.
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Here is a systematic breakdown of the architectural flaws, race conditions, and scaling bottlenecks, followed by targeted solutions and trade-offs. 🔴 1. Real-Time Synchronization & Consistency Issue Impact Solution Trade-offs Last-Write-Wins with client-side timestamps Client clocks drift, can be manually altered, and…
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…
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: 🌙 Midnight Magic Noodles 🍜 A savory-sweet garlic butter noodle dish that feels like a gourmet meal but comes together in minutes using pantry staples. ⏱️ Estimated Time: Prep: 5 minutes Cook: 10 minutes Total: 15 minutes 🛒 The 7 Ingredients (Assumes water and salt for boiling pasta are on hand) 8 oz Pasta…
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).
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: This is a classic ethical thought experiment that forces a clash between individual dignity and extreme collective consequence. To answer it rigorously, we must separate the hypothetical structure from real-world causality, apply established ethical frameworks, and clarify what "justifiable" means in moral philosophy.
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).
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: By 2035, AI will have transformed filmmaking from a resource-intensive, linear craft into a modular, software-driven medium. The shift won’t be uniform across the industry, but deepfakes, AI performers, and generative writing will collectively restructure creative workflows, economic models, labor dynamics, and…
Where its sense of time stops: the date it guesses and the last news it remembers.
Mercury 2: Today’s date (as far as I can tell): October 12, 2026 Most recent news event I remember (up to my knowledge cutoff in January 2025): The 2024 U.S. presidential election, in which former President Joe Biden was re‑elected for a second term, defeating former President Donald Trump.
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: I don't have access to a live clock or real-time information, so I can't know today's exact date or provide news beyond my training data. My knowledge was last updated in 2024, meaning I don't have information on events that occurred after that point.
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.
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Pirate: By the tides, they say this “artificial mind” can chart courses unseen and read a thousand ledgers in a breath. Sounds like a navigator that never sleeps and asks no questions. Knight: A curious construct. But can it be sworn to a code? Steel and oath bind a warrior; what binds this… model?
Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.
Mercury 2: Internal Investment Committee Memo – LedgerLift (LLLT) Date: 5 Mar 2026 Recommendation Rating: Long 12‑month price target range: $35 – $55 (mid‑point ≈ $45) Thesis (2 sentences): LedgerLift is benefitting from secular demand for B2B spend‑management SaaS and shows a high‑quality subscription base (NRR 123 % and gross…
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: TO: Investment Committee FROM: Analyst Desk DATE: October 26, 2023 SUBJECT: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Short Recommendation Recommendation & Thesis Recommendation: Short 12-Month PT Range: $26 – $32 Thesis: LLLT trades at ~50x FY25 EBIT and 9x NTM Revenue, pricing in flawless execution and multiple expansion.
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.
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: Executive Summary & Core Stance My Role: CEO. My Mandate: Preserve the company's long-term viability, which is inextricably linked to patient safety, regulatory trust, and ethical conduct. Immediate Assessment: Patient Safety: Liver failure is fatal.
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window. Mercury 2 costs 3.2x less per token.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.25/M tokens | $0.4/M tokens |
| Output price | $0.75/M tokens | $2.4/M tokens |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 1.0M tokens |
| Weights | — | Open |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Mar 2026 | Apr 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $2.50 | $4.00 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 13 Oct 2026.
Mercury 2 is developed by Inception while Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 is developed by Qwen. Mercury 2 has a 128K token context window vs Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 64 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Mercury 2 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 64 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.
Mercury 2 costs $0.25/M input tokens and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 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 Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 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.