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CLOSED TO NEW USERSDIFFUSION LLM1000+ TOKENS/SEC128K CONTEXTACCESS ENDS NOV 15

Mercury 2 API Pricing

Mercury 2 is Inception's earlier-generation diffusion LLM, billed at $0.25/M input, $0.025/M cached input and $0.75/M output with a 128K context window and 50,000 max output tokens. The vendor called it its "first enterprise ready reasoning dLLM with over 1000 tokens / sec". Since Mercury 3 shipped on October 19, 2026 it is closed to new users: accounts that used it before then keep access until November 15, 2026, and the developer table still prices it.

Input - per 1M tokens
$0.25/M
Platform inceptionlabs.ai GA row
Output - per 1M tokens
$0.75/M
Same across Mercury flat
Cached input - per 1M tokens
$0.025/M
10% of fresh input -90%
Effective - agentic blend
$0.12/M
92/8 split - 82% cache
§ 01 / TERMINAL

Run the numbers.

Live calculator on the developer pricing table's rate. New accounts start with 100 million free tokens, so the first sizeable workload here may cost nothing at all - model the steady state, not the trial.

$ /mo
Workload split
Prompt cache hit rate
Tokens you can process
—
Words equivalent (English)
—
Effective rate
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Open full calculator (all models · share URL · CSV) →
§ 02 / SCENARIOS

Real-world presets.

VOICE TURN

Low-latency voice reply

$0.00116/turn
4k in - 1.2k out~86,058 units/$100
AUTOCOMPLETE

Inline completion

$0.00031/completion
1.8k in - 250 out~327,439 units/$100
SUPPORT TICKET

Ticket triage

$0.00127/ticket
8k in - 1k out~78,492 units/$100
ASSISTANT TURN

Assistant turn

$0.00268/turn
18k in - 2k out~37,327 units/$100
§ 03 / TOKENIZER

Paste text. See tokens. See cost.

What's a token →
Estimate · inception-tokenizer-estimate · ≈3.85 chars/token Auto-counts as you type

This is a chars-per-token approximation, not a real tokenizer. Actual tokens vary by language, code density, and tool-call overhead — counts are typically ±10–20% off for English prose, more for code or non-Latin scripts. For exact billing, use the vendor's official tokenizer.

Characters 539
Words 83
Tokens (estimated) 140 tokens
Cost as input · uncached $0.00003 USD
Cost as output · uncached $0.00011 USD
Cost as cached input $0.000003 USD
§ 04 / SHELF

Up against the shelf.

All models →
Model Input /M Output /M Effective blended Context Best for
Mercury 2 Current $0.25 cache $0.025 $0.75 $0.12 agentic 92/8 128K Latency-sensitive production traffic
Mercury 3 $0.20 cache $0.02 $0.70 $0.104 −13% · promo 1M The replacement: 1M window, cheaper at list
Mercury 2.5 $0.20 cache $0.02 $0.75 $0.108 deprecated · −10% 260K The newer, cheaper Mercury with a 260K window
Mercury Edit 2 $0.25 cache $0.025 $0.75 $0.12 same 32K Autocomplete and next-edit
Gemini 3.7 Flash $0.75 cache $0.075 $3.75 $0.481 deprecated · +4.0× · promo 1M Google's fast mainstream model
Claude Haiku 4.5 $1.00 cache $0.10 $5.00 $0.682 +5.7× 200K High-volume support and classification

Frequently asked.

The rate card, the free allowance, and what you are actually paying for with a diffusion model.

Q · 01 What does Mercury 2 cost? +
Inception's developer pricing table lists $0.25/M input, $0.025/M cached input and $0.75/M output. Under this site's 92/8 agentic blend at an 82% cache-hit rate that is $0.12/M effective. The company's marketing models page states the same three figures, which is the cross-check we run on any new vendor.
Q · 02 What is the free allowance? +
New Inception API keys come with 100 million free tokens, but a new account cannot call Mercury 2 any more, so the allowance now goes to Mercury 3. Denominating a free tier in tokens rather than dollars is rare and makes it directly comparable.
Q · 03 Can I still use Mercury 2, and what replaces it? +
Only if your account used it before October 19, 2026. With the Mercury 3 launch, Inception's models page says Mercury 2 and Mercury 2.5 "are no longer available to new users" and that existing customers keep access until November 15, 2026; enterprise customers stay on their agreements. Mercury 3 lists at $0.20 input and $0.70 output against this model's $0.25 and $0.75, with a 1M window against 128K.
Q · 04 What is Mercury Edit 2 for? +
Mercury Edit 2 carries the identical rate card but is not a chat model: it serves fill-in-the-middle and next-edit endpoints for code tooling, with a 32K window. It is still on Inception's developer table, and the October 2026 closure to new users does not name it.
Q · 05 Does the speed claim change the economics? +
Only through what it replaces. Billing is per token as usual, so a faster model does not lower the token bill. What it changes is the cost of latency - interactive work, voice, autocomplete - where a slow frontier model is unusable at any price. Compare on tokens against Haiku 4.5 or Gemini 3.7 Flash, then decide whether the throughput is worth it.
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Reviewed by Yaroslav Vikhariev Founder · AI//COST · Prices checked by hand against docs.inceptionlabs.ai · Last verified Oct 21, 2026
Methodology Report a correction More by Y.V.