Model comparison
Inkling vs Mercury 2.5
Inkling has enough public results to be ranked (#75); Mercury 2.5 does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling scores higher in 1 category and Mercury 2.5 in 0 categories; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Inkling leads 31.2 to 22.4.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.87 / $4.68 for Inkling.
- Mercury 2.5 accepts more context: 260K tokens versus 66K.
- Inkling has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Inkling | Mercury 2.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 30.2 |
| Released | 2026-07-15 | 2026-09-08 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 66K | 260K |
| Max output | 66K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.87 | $0.04 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $4.68 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 41 | 2 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Inkling: 34.1 (#229), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 946 | 301.65 |
| FrontierCode | 14% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1412 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 4.1% | — |
| SciCode | 47% | — |
| WeirdML | 32.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1463 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Inkling: 29.5 (#76), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25% | — |
Reasoning Not comparable
Inkling: 40.6 (#48), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 36.5% | — |
| SimpleBench | 50% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 79.5% | — |
| CritPt | 5.4% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 21% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1452 | — |
| DTBench | 87.5% | — |
| LMCA | 37.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.6 | — |
Math Inkling leads
Inkling: 31.2 (#198), Mercury 2.5: 22.4
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | 0% | 3% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 33.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 4.9% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1482 | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Inkling: 55.2 (#44), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.3% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1468 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Inkling: 54.2 (#49), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1434 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1495 | — |
| LMArena French | 1453 | — |
| LMArena German | 1456 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1401 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1430 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1442 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Inkling: 75.3 (#65), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1427 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Inkling: 43.9 (#79), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1436 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Inkling: 65.5 (#48), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1390 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1611 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1226 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1436 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Inkling better than Mercury 2.5?
Inkling has enough public results to be ranked (#75); Mercury 2.5 does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.
Which is cheaper, Inkling or Mercury 2.5?
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Inkling lists at $1.87 and $4.68.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mercury 2.5 does, with 260K tokens against 66K.
How many benchmarks do Inkling and Mercury 2.5 share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling has 41 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2.5 has 2.