# 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.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/inkling-vs-mercury-2-5
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## 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.

## Snapshot

| | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 33.5 |
| Rank | 80 | 242 |
| Context | 66K | 260K |
| Input $/M | $1.87 | $0.04 |
| Output $/M | $4.68 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- 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

- Inkling: 29.6 (#85)
- Mercury 2.5: —

| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25% | — |

## Reasoning

- 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: 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

- Inkling: 55.1 (#49)
- Mercury 2.5: —

| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.3% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1465 | — |

## Multilingual

- 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

- Inkling: 75.1 (#71)
- Mercury 2.5: —

| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1426 | — |

## Long Context

- Inkling: 43.8 (#86)
- Mercury 2.5: —

| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1434 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- 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 | — |

## FAQ

### 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.