Inception: Models Intelligence, Performance & Price
This analysis is intended to support you in choosing the best model provided by Inception for your use-case.
Most Intelligent
UpdatedMercury 2Mercury 2.5Intelligence index
Total 2 models
Fastest
Mercury 2Mercury 2.5Output speed
Total 2 models
Lowest Price
Mercury 2Mercury 2.5Blended price (per 1M tokens)
Total 2 models
Inception offers 2 models, each with different intelligence, performance, and pricing characteristics. Below is a comparison of the key metrics across models.
- For intelligence, the top models on Inception are Mercury 2 (14) and Mercury 2.5 (12).
- For output speed, the fastest models are Mercury 2 (764 t/s) and Mercury 2.5 (697 t/s).
- For latency, Mercury 2.5 (3.59s) and Mercury 2 (4.68s) offer the lowest time to first answer token.
- For pricing, Mercury 2 ($0.14) and Mercury 2.5 ($0.14) offer the lowest blended prices per 1M tokens.
- For context window size, Mercury 2.5 (256k) and Mercury 2 (128k) support the largest context windows on Inception.
- Mercury 2 stands out as the overall leader on Inception, ranking first across intelligence, speed, and pricing.
Intelligence Evaluations
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
Intelligence Evaluations
Agentic knowledge work, (Elo-500)/2000
Agentic real-world work tasks, (Elo-500)/2000
Agentic SaaS workflows
Agentic coding & terminal use
Coding
Reasoning & knowledge
Professional document reasoning, All-pass
Physics reasoning
Knowledge
1 - hallucination rate
Long context reasoning
Legal agentic work, criterion pass rate
Agentic business operations
Agentic scientific research workflows in a terminal
Quantitative analysis on spreadsheets & documents
Kubernetes incident root-cause analysis
Visual reasoning
Medical long context reasoning
Intelligence Index vs. Price
Context Window
Context Window
Pricing
Intelligence Index vs. Price
Performance Summary
Output Speed vs. Price
Speed
Measured by Output Speed (tokens per second)
Output Speed
Latency
Measured by Time (seconds) to First Token
Latency: Time To First Answer Token
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
Key definitions
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Inception
Inception offers 2 models that we track: Mercury 2 and Mercury 2.5.
The most intelligent model available on Inception is Mercury 2 with an Intelligence Index score of 14.
The fastest model on Inception by output speed is Mercury 2 at 764.2 tokens per second.
The model with the lowest time to first answer token on Inception is Mercury 2.5 at 3.59s. 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 2 models on Inception support JSON mode for structured output.
Yes, all 2 models on Inception support function calling (tool use).
Yes, Inception offers 2 reasoning models: Mercury 2 and Mercury 2.5. 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.