Inception: Models Intelligence, Performance & Price

Name: Intelligence
Creator: Artificial Analysis
License: https://artificialanalysis.ai/docs/legal/Terms-of-Use.pdf

Inception

This analysis is intended to support you in choosing the best model provided by Inception for your use-case.

Most Intelligent

Updated

Mercury 2

Intelligence index

Total 1 model

Fastest

Mercury 2

820 t/s

Output speed

Total 1 model

Lowest Price

Mercury 2

$0.14

Blended price (per 1M tokens)

Total 1 model

Inception currently offers Mercury 2.

Highlights

Updated

Intelligence

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · Higher is better

Speed

Output tokens per second · Higher is better

Price

USD per 1M tokens (blended) · Lower is better

Intelligence Evaluations

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3 incorporates 10 evaluations: AA-Briefcase, GDPval-AA v2, AutomationBench-AA, Terminal-Bench v4.0, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GDP.pdf, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR v1.1

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3 includes: AA-Briefcase, GDPval-AA v2, AutomationBench-AA, Terminal-Bench v4.0, SciCode, Humanity's Last Exam, GDP.pdf, CritPt, AA-Omniscience, AA-LCR v1.1. See Intelligence Index methodology for further details, including a breakdown of each evaluation and how we run them.

Intelligence Evaluations

Intelligence evaluations measured independently by Artificial Analysis · Higher is better

AA-Briefcase

Agentic knowledge work, (Elo-500)/2000

GDPval-AA v2

Agentic real-world work tasks, (Elo-500)/2000

AutomationBench-AAUpdated

Agentic SaaS workflows

Terminal-Bench v4.0New

Agentic coding & terminal use

SciCode

Coding

Humanity's Last Exam

Reasoning & knowledge

GDP.pdfNew

Professional document reasoning, All-pass

CritPt

Physics reasoning

AA-Omniscience Accuracy

Knowledge

AA-Omniscience Non-Hallucination Rate

1 - hallucination rate

AA-LCR v1.1

Long context reasoning

Harvey LAB-AA

Legal agentic work, criterion pass rate

No data available

EnterpriseOps-Gym-AA

Agentic business operations

No data available

AA-AnalystAgent

Quantitative analysis on spreadsheets & documents

No data available

IFBench

Instruction following

𝜏³-Banking

Agentic tool use

APEX-Agents-AA

Long-horizon agentic tasks

No data available

ITBench-AA

Kubernetes incident root-cause analysis

No data available

MMMU-Pro

Visual reasoning

No data available

While model intelligence generally translates across use cases, specific evaluations may be more relevant for certain use cases.

Intelligence Index vs. Price

Blended at 7:2:1 (cache-input-output) · USD per 1M tokens (blended)

Most attractive quadrant

While higher intelligence models are typically more expensive, they do not all follow the same price-quality curve.

Context Window

Context window: tokens limit · Higher is better

Larger context windows are relevant to RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) LLM workflows which typically involve reasoning and information retrieval of large amounts of data.

Maximum number of combined input & output tokens. Output tokens commonly have a significantly lower limit (varied by model).

Pricing

Intelligence Index vs. Price

Blended at 7:2:1 (cache-input-output) · USD per 1M tokens (blended)

Most attractive quadrant

While higher intelligence models are typically more expensive, they do not all follow the same price-quality curve.

Performance Summary

Output Speed vs. Price

Output speed: output tokens per second · USD per 1M tokens (blended)

Most attractive quadrant

Tokens per second received while the model is generating tokens (ie. after first chunk has been received from the API for models which support streaming).

Price per token, shown in USD per million tokens. Price is a blend of cache hit, input, and output token prices using the selected ratio (default 7:2:1 cache-input-output).

Speed

Measured by Output Speed (tokens per second)

Output Speed

Output tokens per second · Higher is better

Tokens per second received while the model is generating tokens (ie. after first chunk has been received from the API for models which support streaming).

Figures represent performance of the model's first-party API (e.g. OpenAI for o1) or the median across providers where a first-party API is not available (e.g. Meta's Llama models).

Latency

Measured by Time (seconds) to First Token

Latency: Time To First Answer Token

Seconds to first answer token received · Accounts for reasoning model 'thinking' time

Time to first answer token received, in seconds, after API request sent. For reasoning models, this includes the 'thinking' time of the model before providing an answer. For models which do not support streaming, this represents time to receive the completion.

End-to-End Response Time

Seconds to output 500 tokens, calculated based on time to first token, 'thinking' time for reasoning models, and output speed

End-to-End Response Time vs. Price

End-to-end response time: end-to-end seconds to output 500 tokens · USD per 1M tokens (blended)

Most attractive quadrant

Price per token, shown in USD per million tokens. Price is a blend of cache hit, input, and output token prices using the selected ratio (default 7:2:1 cache-input-output).


											Further Analysis
Mercury 2	128k			Proprietary	12	$0.07	734	3.60	4.28	--	Model Provider

Key definitions

Maximum number of combined input & output tokens. Output tokens commonly have a significantly lower limit (varied by model).

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Inception

Inception offers 1 model that we track: Mercury 2.

The most intelligent model available on Inception is Mercury 2 with an Intelligence Index score of 12.

The fastest model on Inception by output speed is Mercury 2 at 819.9 tokens per second.

The model with the lowest time to first answer token on Inception is Mercury 2 at 4.52s. Lower latency means faster initial response time.

The most affordable model on Inception by blended price is Mercury 2 at $0.14 per 1M tokens (7:2:1 cache hit/input/output ratio).

Yes, Inception offers an OpenAI-compatible API, making it easy to switch from OpenAI or use existing OpenAI SDK integrations.

Yes, all 1 models on Inception support JSON mode for structured output.

Yes, all 1 models on Inception support function calling (tool use).

Yes, Inception offers 1 reasoning model: Mercury 2. Reasoning models use extended thinking to work through complex problems before providing an answer.

Yes, provider performance can vary over time due to infrastructure changes, load balancing, and updates. We continuously benchmark all providers and display historical performance trends in the "Over Time" charts.

When choosing a model on Inception, consider: intelligence (for quality-sensitive tasks), output speed (for throughput-intensive tasks), latency (for interactive applications requiring quick first responses), pricing (for cost-sensitive workloads), and features like context window size, JSON mode, or function calling support.

Inception: Models Intelligence, Performance & Price

Most Intelligent

Fastest

Lowest Price

Intelligence

Speed

Price

Intelligence Evaluations

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Intelligence Evaluations

Intelligence Evaluation Relevance

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Intelligence Index vs. Price

Price-Quality Variance

Context Window

Context Window

Context Window for RAG

Context Window

Pricing

Intelligence Index vs. Price

Price-Quality Variance

Performance Summary

Output Speed vs. Price

Output Speed

Price

Speed

Output Speed

Output Speed

Model Performance Representation

Latency

Latency: Time To First Answer Token

Time to First Answer Token

End-to-End Response Time

End-to-End Response Time vs. Price

Price

Key definitions

Context Window

Frequently Asked Questions

What models does Inception offer?

What is the most intelligent model on Inception?

What is the fastest model on Inception?

Which model has the lowest latency on Inception?

What is the cheapest model on Inception?

Is Inception OpenAI compatible?

Does Inception support JSON mode?

Does Inception support function calling?

Does Inception offer reasoning models?

Does Inception's performance change over time?

How do I choose a model on Inception?