Mercury 2.5 Preview
Inception · released Aug 31, 2026
- Type
- Closed
- Input
- $0.040
- Output
- $0.15
- Cached
- $0.004
List price · per 1M tokens · Inception at 260K context · source ↗
Our take
Written Sep 2, 2026Mercury 2.5 Preview is a hosted-only text model from Inception built around a 260,000-token request limit. It is pitched as a long-context specialist at budget-tier pricing, though no quality scores have been published yet.
Pick this when you need to process very long documents in a single pass and cost per token matters more than proven quality. Use the Inception host if 152 tokens per second meets your latency needs. Skip it if you need image, video or audio support, want to self-host, or require measured benchmark scores before choosing.
The case for it
- 260,000-token request limit at a low per-token rate — 2.6× the 100K tier without a price premium.
- Inception-hosted throughput of 152 tokens per second.
The case against it
- No measured quality data: no chat, coding, reasoning or other task scores in our records.
- Hosted only with no local deployment, fine-tuning or redistribution rights.
- Text-to-text only; no image, video or audio input or output.
How good is it?
We hold no score for this model.
So there is no figure here for everyday use, coding, agent work or writing. That is a gap in our data, not a low score.
Where to rent it
Prices checked 2 hours ago — each listing carries its own date.
Inception, through OpenRouter
The lab is also the cheapest we hold. The strip above and this offer are the same one, so nothing on this page undercuts Inception on 260K of context.
- per 1M tokens
- $0.040 in / $0.15 out
- Context served
- 260K
- Throughput
- ~214 tok/s
| Provider | In / out per 1M tokens | Context | Throughput | Trains on prompts | Logs prompts | Zero retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouterOpenRouter's own listing | $0.040 / $0.15checked 2 hours ago | 260K | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| InceptionThrough OpenRouter | $0.040 / $0.15checked 2 hours ago | 260K66K max reply | 214 tok/s | No | No | Unknown |
OpenRouterAcross the 2 listings we hold: 1 says it does not train on prompts, 0 say they do and 1 does not say. 0 appear in the zero-retention registry we check; the rest are unknown to us.
What each host's API supports
From the parameter list each endpoint publishes. Streaming is omitted: nothing we hold reports it, for any model.
| Provider | Tool calling | JSON output | Strict schema |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouterOpenRouter's own listing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| InceptionThrough OpenRouter | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Tool calling: 2 of 2 listings say yes. JSON output: 2 of 2 listings say yes. Strict schema: 2 of 2 listings say yes.
When we formed this view
Recent changes
What moved
first indexed by our pipelineEach date is the day we first saw the change, or the day the maker announced it.
What we do not know about this model yet
- No independent board has scored it, so we hold no quality figures at all.
- Nothing we hold says whether an endpoint streams, so we do not show it either way.
- 1 of 2 listings does not say whether it trains on prompts.
- We hold no batch or off-peak rate for any of its listings.
Licence and identifiers
What the licence allowsWe hold no licence record for this model. Inside are the identifiers you need to pull it — its Hugging Face repo where we have one, our slug and a machine-readable card.
Licence
We hold no licence record for this model, and no record of published weights either — so we can neither summarise its terms nor point you at the weights.
Identifiers
- Takes in, gives back
- Text in, text out
- Catalogue slug
- inception-mercury-2-5-preview