Model comparison
Inkling vs Mercury 2.5
Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 38× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling scores higher in 2 categories and Mercury 2.5 in 1 category; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Inkling leads 40.4 to 22.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 47% for Inkling and 38.5% for Mercury 2.5.
- 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 | 33.5 |
| 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 | 4 |
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Category by category
Coding Mercury 2.5 leads
Inkling: 34.5 (#234), Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 47% | 38.5% |
| ALE-Bench | 946 | 301.65 |
| FrontierCode | 14% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1413 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 4.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 32.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1464 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Inkling: 29.6 (#85), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25% | — |
Reasoning Inkling leads
Inkling: 40.4 (#56), Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 5.4% | 0% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 36.5% | — |
| SimpleBench | 50% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 79.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 21% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1451 | — |
| DTBench | 87.5% | — |
| LMCA | 37.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.54 | — |
Math Inkling leads
Inkling: 31.3 (#225), Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272)
| 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 | 1479 | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Inkling: 55.1 (#49), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.3% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1465 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Inkling: 54.0 (#52), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1434 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1490 | — |
| LMArena French | 1458 | — |
| LMArena German | 1446 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1429 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1404 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1429 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1448 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Inkling: 75.1 (#71), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1426 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Inkling: 43.8 (#86), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1434 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Inkling: 65.2 (#51), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1441 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1387 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1611 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1226 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1436 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Inkling better than Mercury 2.5?
Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 38× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
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.
Is Inkling or Mercury 2.5 better for coding?
Mercury 2.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.5 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.
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?
4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling has 41 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2.5 has 4.