Inception: Mercury
Analysis Summary
Inception: Mercury sits in the Legacy tier on our leaderboard, ranked #350 of 561 published models on overall intelligence. At $0.250 input and $0.750 output per 1M tokens, it is among the most expensive on the market. It offers a standard large context window and supports tool use and function calling.
Editorial notes
Inception Mercury offers tool use, function calling, and a 128K context at low pricing, but has no benchmark data to validate its performance claims against the broader field.
Assessed May 14, 2026
Rankings consider pricing, capabilities, benchmarks, and real-world applicability and are refreshed as new models launch. Feedback?
Performance Profile
Mercury is the first diffusion large language model (dLLM). Applying a breakthrough discrete diffusion approach, the model runs 5-10x faster than even speed optimized models like GPT-4.1 Nano and Claude..
Capabilities
How does Inception: Mercury stack up?
Compare side-by-side with other legacy models.
Model Information
| OpenRouter ID |
inception/mercury
|
| Provider | inception |
| Release Date | June 26, 2025 |
| Context Length | 128,000 tokens |
| Max Completion | 32,000 tokens |
| Status | Active |
Pricing
| Token Type | Cost per 1M tokens | Cost per 1K tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.25 | $0.000250 |
| Output | $0.75 | $0.000750 |
