Mercury 2.5 API Pricing
Mercury 2.5 has tracked API rates of $0.2 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens. Rates are in USD from the AI IQ dataset; see the Mercury 2.5 model profile for capability scores.
Price List
| Rate | Price (USD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.2 | per 1M tokens |
| Output | $0.75 | per 1M tokens |
| Blended input + output | $0.95 | 1M in + 1M out at list price |
| Context window | 260K tokens |
Pricing References and Billing Caveats
These are the tracked rates, not a live quote. Hosted-provider choice, region, long-context tiers, caching, batch discounts, and temporary promotions can change the actual bill. Open-weight availability does not mean hosted inference is free. Workload examples assume the listed standard input and output rates, with no cache hits or discounts.
Publisher-reported pricing notes
- The launch discount is temporary; stored pricing uses the published standard rate.
Official release and model references
These references document the model and its release; not every reference is a pricing table. Confirm the applicable endpoint and billing tier with your inference provider before purchase.
What a Workload Costs
Computed straight from the list prices above — token counts are illustrative workload sizes, not measurements of Mercury 2.5.
| Workload | Cost | Tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Short chat turn | $0.00057 | 1K in / 500 out |
| Summarize a long document | $0.021 | 100K in / 2K out |
| Agentic coding session | $0.175 | 500K in / 100K out |
| 1M input + 1M output tokens | $0.950 | 1M in / 1M out |
Effective Cost
In AI IQ's scoring, Mercury 2.5's list price is adjusted by a token-usage multiplier of 0.444 (measured from real benchmark runs), giving an effective cost of $0.422 per 1M input + output tokens. That places it #21 of 155 models on the effective-cost ranking (lower is cheaper). Some models spend far more tokens than others on the same task, so effective cost compares what a unit of work really costs. Method details are on the methodology page; see all models on the cost charts and the falling cost of intelligence over time.
Cheaper Alternatives at Similar Capability
Models with a lower effective cost that score within a few IQ points of Mercury 2.5 (IQ 100), or better.
| Model | Provider | IQ | Effective Cost / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| mimo-v2.5 | Xiaomi | 108 | $0.2405 |
| Ling 3.0 Flash | China (Other) | 105 | $0.3388 |
| mimo-v2-flash | Xiaomi | 103 | $0.3083 |
| gemma-4-31b | 101 | $0.1355 | |
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | US (Other) | 100 | $0.2634 |
| gemma-4-26b | 99 | $0.1355 |