GPT-5.6 Sol Paid vs INMercury 2.5 Paid
GPT-5.6 Sol vs Mercury 2.5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
GPT-5.6 Sol — full profile › · Mercury 2.5 — full profile ›
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
$10 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
$0.15 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
GPT-5.6 Sol vs Mercury 2.5 specs
| Spec | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mercury 2.5 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | Inception | – |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
| Context window | 1.1M tokens | 260K tokens | |
| Input price | $2/M | $0.04/M | INMercury 2.5 |
| Output price | $10/M | $0.15/M | INMercury 2.5 |
| Vision / multimodal | Yes | No | |
| Tool / function calling | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Self-hostable | No (API only) | No (API only) | – |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
Price gap & when to choose each
Mercury 2.5 is ~67× cheaper than GPT-5.6 Sol on output tokens ($0.15 vs $10 per M tokens).
- You want frontier performance through a managed API
- You need the longer 1.1M context window
- You value reliability & ecosystem
- You don't want to manage infrastructure
- 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
| Capability | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| Runs fully offline | ✗ | ✗ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✓ | ✗ |
| Tool / function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✓ | ✗ |
Benchmarks: GPT-5.6 Sol vs Mercury 2.5
Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).
Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.
How GPT-5.6 Sol and Mercury 2.5 score
| Criterion | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 3.5 | 5.0 |
| Context window | 5.0 | 4.0 |
| Openness | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Self-hosting | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Multimodality | 5.0 | 3.5 |
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-5.6 Sol Paid
GPT-5.6 Sol is the flagship model in OpenAI's GPT-5.6 series. It is suited for complex reasoning, coding, and agentic workflows, and is particularly strong at command-line and multi-step coding tasks...
Mercury 2.5 Paid
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-5.6 Sol vs Mercury 2.5 — which is cheaper?
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper on output ($0.15/M vs $10/M).
Which has the larger context window?
GPT-5.6 Sol offers the larger context window (1.1M tokens).
GPT-5.6 Sol vs Mercury 2.5 — which should I pick in 2026?
Choose Mercury 2.5 for the lower output price ($0.15/M vs $10/M). Choose GPT-5.6 Sol if you need the larger 1.1M context window.
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