GPT-5.5 vs Mercury 2
Head-to-head specifications
| Metric | GPT-5.5 | Mercury 2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence Index | 55.0 | 29.0 | +89.7% |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 131K tokens | — |
| Blended price ($/1M tokens) | $1.54 | $0.14 | +1,000.0% |
| Output speed (tokens/s) | 67 | 763 | -91.2% |
| Access | Proprietary API | Open weights | — |
- GPT-5.5 leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 55.0 vs 29.0).
- Mercury 2 is the cheaper model to run at $0.14/1M blended tokens — about 11.0× cheaper.
- GPT-5.5 offers the larger context window (1M tokens), useful for long documents and codebases.
Verdict: GPT-5.5 or Mercury 2?
GPT-5.5 advantages
- General intelligence (+47%)
- Context window (+87%)
Mercury 2 advantages
- Affordability (+91%)
- Output speed (+91%)
Which should you choose?
- Choose the GPT-5.5 if you need the strongest overall reasoning and accuracy.
- Choose the Mercury 2 if you want the lowest cost per token at scale.
- Choose the GPT-5.5 if you work with long documents or large codebases.
Value for money
Mercury 2 offers more intelligence per dollar (5.8× the Intelligence-Index-per-cost of the alternative), making it the stronger value for high-volume use. It is also open-weight, so self-hosting can reduce costs further at scale.
GPT-5.5 vs Mercury 2: which should you choose?
GPT-5.5 — OpenAI multimodal model with an Intelligence Index of 55, a 1M-token context window and a blended price of $1.54/1M tokens.
Mercury 2 — Inception Labs multimodal model with an Intelligence Index of 29, a 131K-token context window and a blended price of $0.14/1M tokens (open weights).
GPT-5.5 vs Mercury 2: GPT-5.5 scores higher on the Intelligence Index. GPT-5.5 leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 55.0 vs 29.0). Mercury 2 is the cheaper model to run at $0.14/1M blended tokens — about 11.0× cheaper.
Capability: intelligence, coding and agentic work
On the composite Intelligence Index the GPT-5.5 scores 55.0 versus 29.0. Composite indices summarize many evaluations, but always test on your own workload before committing.
Context window and speed
The GPT-5.5 accepts up to 1 million tokens per request, which sets how much documentation, transcript or code it can reason over at once. In measured throughput, Mercury 2 generates faster (763 vs 67 tokens/s), which matters for interactive apps and high-volume pipelines.
Pricing and access
At blended per-token rates, Mercury 2 is the cheaper model to run ($0.14 vs $1.54 per 1M tokens). GPT-5.5 is proprietary api and Mercury 2 is open weights. Open-weight models can be self-hosted, trading per-call cost for infrastructure you manage; for production also weigh rate limits, throughput and data-residency requirements.
The verdict
Both are credible choices in the ai model comparison space; the specification table above lays out every metric so you can weigh the trade-offs that matter to you. Pick the one whose strengths line up with how you will actually use it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the GPT-5.5 better than the Mercury 2?
These two are closely matched — the right pick comes down to which specific strengths you value and the price you actually pay. GPT-5.5 leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 55.0 vs 29.0).
What is the main difference between the GPT-5.5 and the Mercury 2?
GPT-5.5 leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 55.0 vs 29.0). Mercury 2 is the cheaper model to run at $0.14/1M blended tokens — about 11.0× cheaper.
Which is better value?
Mercury 2 offers more intelligence per dollar (5.8× the Intelligence-Index-per-cost of the alternative), making it the stronger value for high-volume use. It is also open-weight, so self-hosting can reduce costs further at scale.
Which should I choose?
Choose the GPT-5.5 if you need the strongest overall reasoning and accuracy. Choose the Mercury 2 if you want the lowest cost per token at scale.
Methodology
Large language models are compared on independent leaderboard metrics: an Intelligence Index (a composite of reasoning and knowledge evaluations), Coding and Agentic indices where measured, community arena Elo, maximum context window, a blended API price per million tokens (weighted across cache-hit, input and output rates), and measured output speed in tokens per second. Where a model ships multiple reasoning-effort variants, we report its strongest variant. Benchmarks capture only part of real-world quality, which also depends on tool use, latency, safety and task fit — and this space moves quickly, so figures reflect the leaderboard snapshot on the page date.