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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

Mercury 2 API cost calculator.

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

Mercury 2 cost on real workloads.

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

Mercury 2 token counter and 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

Mercury 2 vs similar models.

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 5.5 $0.10 cache $0.01 $0.50 $0.0682 −43% 1M Anthropic's fast, high-volume tier

Mercury 2 API pricing FAQ.

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.