AI Models · Paid vs Paid

GPT-5.2 Chat Paid vs INMercury 2 Paid

GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2 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 2PaidInception
$0.25 /M input
$0.75 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window128K tokens
MultimodalNo
Self-hostNo
Choose Mercury 2 for the lower output price ($0.75/M vs $14/M). Choose GPT-5.2 Chat if you need the larger 128K context window.

GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2 specs

SpecGPT-5.2 ChatMercury 2Winner
MakerOpenAIInception
TypeProprietaryProprietary
Context window128K tokens128K tokens= Tie
Input price$1.75/M$0.25/MINMercury 2
Output price$14/M$0.75/MINMercury 2
Vision / multimodalYesNoGPT-5.2 Chat
Tool / function callingYesYes= Tie
Self-hostableNo (API only)No (API only)
LicenseProprietaryProprietary

Price gap & when to choose each

19×cheaper per output token

Mercury 2 is ~19× cheaper than GPT-5.2 Chat on output tokens ($0.75 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 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You want the lower output price
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

CapabilityGPT-5.2 ChatMercury 2
Open weights (downloadable)
Self-hostable
Runs fully offline
Vision / multimodal
Tool / function calling
1M+ context window

Benchmarks: GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2

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

Mercury 2 delivers 8.8× more intelligence per dollar.
GPT-5.2 Chat
Mercury 2
Intelligence index
17
11.5
Math index
51
GPQA
71.2%
77%
MMLU-Pro
81.4%
Humanity's Last Exam
8%
17.1%
Long Context Reasoning
45.7%
43.7%
LiveCodeBench
66.9%
AIME 2025
51%
IFBench
47.4%
69.8%
τ²-Bench
46.5%
70.8%
τ-Bench Banking
11.1%
9.5%
Terminal-Bench Hard
31.8%
26.5%
Coding index
31.1
SciCode
37.7%
Terminal-Bench
27.3%
Speed
0 tok/s
1011.9 tok/s
Latency
0s
4.14s
Intelligence per $
3.5
30.7

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How GPT-5.2 Chat and Mercury 2 score

🤝 Neck and neck on these criteria (2.9 vs 2.9 / 5).
CriterionGPT-5.2 ChatMercury 2
Cost-efficiency3.55.0
Context window3.53.5
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 Paid

Inception · Proprietary

Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM). Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2 produces and refines multiple tokens in parallel, achieving...

Frequently asked questions

GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2 — which is cheaper?

Mercury 2 is cheaper on output ($0.75/M vs $14/M).

Which has the larger context window?

GPT-5.2 Chat offers the larger context window (128K tokens).

GPT-5.2 Chat vs Mercury 2 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Mercury 2 for the lower output price ($0.75/M vs $14/M). Choose GPT-5.2 Chat if you need the larger 128K context window.

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