Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview

Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview

inception · Released Aug 31, 2026 NEW
Intelligence #365 / 743
32.3 our score
Speed
Not reported
Input Price #171 / 748
$0.040 per 1M tokens
Output Price #182 / 748
$0.150 per 1M tokens
Context #306 / 748
260,000 tokens

Analysis Summary

Mercury 2.5 Preview is Inception's preview model, designed around economical API use and long-context workflows. It provides a 260K context window, tool use, and function calling, which are useful building blocks for document processing, structured extraction, and lightweight agents. The text-only interface keeps the operational surface straightforward.

For agency work, it could handle bulk SEO transformations, content briefs, routing, and internal process automation where a low input cost matters. The supplied record contains no independent benchmark results, so its reasoning quality, instruction reliability, and coding performance remain unverified. Preview status also argues against making it the sole model in a customer-facing workflow. Use it for monitored experiments and volume-sensitive tasks with validation, rather than complex autonomous decisions.

Assessed September 1, 2026

Editorial notes

Mercury 2.5 Preview offers very low input pricing, a 260K context window, and tool and function-calling support. As a preview without independent benchmark data, it is better suited to controlled automation pilots than high-stakes client delivery.

Rankings consider pricing, capabilities, benchmarks, and real-world applicability and are refreshed as new models launch. Feedback?

DFO Verdict

Mercury 2.5 Preview offers very low input pricing, a 260K context window, and tool and function-calling support. As a preview without independent benchmark data, it is better suited to controlled automation pilots than high-stakes client delivery.

#365 of 743 overall

How Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview compares

Its 260K-token context window is larger than 59% of the models we list. At $0.04 per million input tokens it is cheaper than 77% of comparable models.

Position in the field
Intelligence: smarter than 51% of models #365
Price: cheaper than 77% of models #171
Context: larger than 59% of models #306
worst in fieldmedianbest in field
Price vs frontier peers · $ per 1M tokens
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview $0.04 in $0.15 out
Claude Opus 5 $5.00 in $25.00 out
OpenAI: GPT-5.6 Sol $2.00 in $10.00 out
SpaceXAI: Grok 4.6 $2.00 in $6.00 out

Dark bar = input · light bar = output, scaled to the priciest peer.

Context window vs peers · tokens
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview 260K

1M tokens ≈ 8 full-length novels or ~2,500 pages of business documents in a single request.

Intelligence0Technical0Value8.3Content5.8
Performance profile

Strongest on value. The pulled-in technical corner is the trade-off, and if the shape matters more than the price, this is your model.

Compare shapes side-by-side →

Pricing

Token Type Cost per 1M tokens Cost per 1K tokens
Input $0.04 $0.000040
Output $0.15 $0.000150

What would Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview cost your business?

Pick the job that looks most like yours, then fine-tune with the sliders. Estimates update live.

A website chatbot handling around 100 customer conversations a day, a few short messages each.

3,000
One request is one message, email, draft or automation call.
1,200 tokens

$0/mo Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview

Full calculator with 748 models → Price Calculator

DFO AI AUTOMATION

These numbers get smaller with the right architecture.

We route routine calls to cheap models and save Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview for the hard ones. Most clients cut their estimate by 60-80%.

Talk to our team

About Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview

Mercury 2.5 is the fastest reasoning LLM, and the latest diffusion LLM (dLLM) from Inception. Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2.5 produces and refines multiple tokens in parallel, achieving..

Frequently asked questions about Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview

How much does Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview cost?

Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview costs $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens.

What is the context window of Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview?

Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview has a context window of 260,000 tokens (260K).

What can Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview do?

Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview supports tool use and function calling.

Who created Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview?

Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview is developed by Inception and was released on August 31, 2026.

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