Beam 1.0 501B A23B vs Mercury 2.5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Can the open-source model replace the paid one? Full 2026 breakdown.
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
| Spec | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Mercury 2.5 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | Reflection | Inception | – |
| Type | Open-weight | Proprietary | REBeam 1.0 501B A23B |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 260K tokens | REBeam 1.0 501B A23B |
| Input price | $0.25/M · free self-host | $0.04/M | INMercury 2.5 |
| Output price | $1/M · free self-host | $0.15/M | INMercury 2.5 |
| Vision / multimodal | No | No | – |
| Tool / function calling | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No (API only) | REBeam 1.0 501B A23B |
| License | Open weights | Proprietary | REBeam 1.0 501B A23B |
Mercury 2.5 is ~6.7× cheaper than Beam 1.0 501B A23B on output tokens ($0.15 vs $1 per M tokens).
| Capability | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✓ | ✗ |
| Runs fully offline | ✓ | ✗ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✗ | ✗ |
| Tool / function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✓ | ✗ |
Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).
Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.
| Criterion | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 4.5 | 5.0 |
| Context window | 5.0 | 4.0 |
| Openness | 5.0 | 1.5 |
| Self-hosting | 5.0 | 1.0 |
| Multimodality | 3.5 | 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.
Beam 1.0 is Reflection's open-weight reasoning model for coding and long-horizon agentic workflows. It uses a sparse mixture-of-experts architecture with 501B total and 23B active parameters per token, and a...
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...
Beam 1.0 501B A23B is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Mercury 2.5 may still lead on the hardest reasoning and agentic work. The gap keeps narrowing — benchmark both on your actual use case before deciding.
Yes. Beam 1.0 501B A23B has open weights, so you can self-host it on your own GPUs or run it via a low-cost API. Mercury 2.5 is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.
Choose Beam 1.0 501B A23B if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Mercury 2.5 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.
Browse the full open-source model leaderboard, thousands of tools and live benchmarks — all in one place.
Open the leaderboard →