AI Models · Paid vs Paid

GPT-5.2 Chat Paid vs INMercury 2.5 Paid

GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2.5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

GPT-5.2 ChatPaidOpenAI
$1.75 /M input
$14 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window128K tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
INMercury 2.5PaidInception
$0.04 /M input
$0.15 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window260K tokens
MultimodalNo
Self-hostNo
Choose Mercury 2.5 for the lower output price ($0.15/M vs $14/M). It also gives you the larger 260K context window.

GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2.5 specs

SpecGPT-5.2 ChatMercury 2.5Winner
MakerOpenAIInception
TypeProprietaryProprietary
Context window128K tokens260K tokensINMercury 2.5
Input price$1.75/M$0.04/MINMercury 2.5
Output price$14/M$0.15/MINMercury 2.5
Vision / multimodalYesNoGPT-5.2 Chat
Tool / function callingYesYes= Tie
Self-hostableNo (API only)No (API only)
LicenseProprietaryProprietary

Price gap & when to choose each

93×cheaper per output token

Mercury 2.5 is ~93× cheaper than GPT-5.2 Chat on output tokens ($0.15 vs $14 per M tokens).

Choose GPT-5.2 Chat if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure
INChoose Mercury 2.5 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You need the longer 260K context window
  • You want the lower output price
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

CapabilityGPT-5.2 ChatMercury 2.5
Open weights (downloadable)
Self-hostable
Runs fully offline
Vision / multimodal
Tool / function calling
1M+ context window

Benchmarks: GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2.5

Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).

GPT-5.2 Chat
Mercury 2.5
Intelligence index
17
Math index
51
GPQA
71.2%
MMLU-Pro
81.4%
Humanity's Last Exam
8%
Long Context Reasoning
45.7%
LiveCodeBench
66.9%
AIME 2025
51%
IFBench
47.4%
τ²-Bench
46.5%
τ-Bench Banking
11.1%
Terminal-Bench Hard
31.8%
Speed
0 tok/s
Latency
0s
Intelligence per $
3.5

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How GPT-5.2 Chat and Mercury 2.5 score

🤝 Neck and neck on these criteria (2.9 vs 3.0 / 5).
CriterionGPT-5.2 ChatMercury 2.5
Cost-efficiency3.55.0
Context window3.54.0
Openness1.51.5
Self-hosting1.01.0
Multimodality5.03.5

Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.

What each model is

GPT-5.2 Chat Paid

OpenAI · Proprietary

GPT-5.2 Chat (AKA Instant) is the fast, lightweight member of the 5.2 family, optimized for low-latency chat while retaining strong general intelligence. It uses adaptive reasoning to selectively “think” on...

Mercury 2.5 Paid

Inception · Proprietary

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

GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2.5 — which is cheaper?

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper on output ($0.15/M vs $14/M).

Which has the larger context window?

Mercury 2.5 offers the larger context window (260K tokens).

GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2.5 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Mercury 2.5 for the lower output price ($0.15/M vs $14/M). It also gives you the larger 260K context window.

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