API cost decision in 10 seconds

Qianfan-OCR-Fast vs Mercury 2

Pick Mercury 2 when budget and context both matter.

Pricing data updated: 2026-05-26T11:08:00Z Prices normalized to USD per 1M tokens Sample workload: 1M input + 500K output

Budget verdict

Pick Mercury 2 when budget and context both matter.

On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Mercury 2 is estimated at $0.62 vs $2.08 for Qianfan-OCR-Fast, saving $1.46 (70% lower).

Cost-first pickMercury 2

Context-first pickMercury 2

Sample savings$1.4670%

10x traffic gap$14.6

Mercury 2 is cheaper on the standard workload and also has the larger context window. At 10x that traffic, the same price gap is about $14.6. Use the calculator below to replace the sample workload with your own token volume.

Cost sensitivity

Workload Sensitivity

Same prices, different token mixes.

Mercury 2 stays cheaper across input-heavy, balanced, and output-heavy sample workloads.

Workload shape	Token mix	Better pick	Qianfan-OCR-Fast	Mercury 2
Input-heavy / RAG	5M input + 500K output	Mercury 2	$4.81	$1.62
Balanced workload	1M input + 1M output	Mercury 2	$3.49	$1
Output-heavy chatbot	1M input + 5M output	Mercury 2	$14.73	$4

Cheaper input Mercury 2 $0.68 vs $0.25 / 1M

Mercury 2 is $0.43 cheaper per 1M input tokens (63.2% lower; 2.72x difference).

Cheaper output Mercury 2 $2.81 vs $0.75 / 1M

Mercury 2 is $2.06 cheaper per 1M output tokens (73.3% lower; 3.75x difference).

Larger context Mercury 2 65.54K vs 128K

Mercury 2 has 62.46K more context (1.95x larger).

Sample workload Mercury 2 $2.08 vs $0.62

Mercury 2 is $1.46 cheaper on the standard workload (70% lower).

Estimate your workload cost

Your Workload Cost

Prices are normalized to USD per 1M tokens.

Monthly input tokens Monthly output tokens

Qianfan-OCR-Fast Calculating… Estimated API cost

Mercury 2 Calculating… Estimated API cost

Cheaper for this workload Calculating… Difference: calculating…

This estimate uses normalized public API pricing per 1M tokens. It is a planning aid, not a billing quote. Verify provider pricing, limits, and terms before production use.

Quick Decision

Verdict

Mercury 2 has the lower input price; Mercury 2 has the lower output price; Mercury 2 offers the larger context window. For the 1M input plus 500K output sample, Mercury 2 is cheaper for the standard workload.

For a 1M input token plus 500K output token workload, the estimated API cost is $2.08 for Qianfan-OCR-Fast and $0.62 for Mercury 2.

Best Fit

Choose Qianfan-OCR-Fast when its provider, model quality, latency, or availability is more important than the numeric price/context winner.

Choose Mercury 2 when you care most about lower input-token price, lower output-token price, and larger context window.

Decision Notes

On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Mercury 2 is estimated at $0.62 vs $2.08 for Qianfan-OCR-Fast, saving $1.46 (70% lower).
Mercury 2 is $1.46 cheaper on the standard workload (70% lower).
Mercury 2 is $0.43 cheaper per 1M input tokens (63.2% lower; 2.72x difference).
Mercury 2 is $2.06 cheaper per 1M output tokens (73.3% lower; 3.75x difference).
Mercury 2 has 62.46K more context (1.95x larger).

Head-to-Head Specs

Feature	Qianfan-OCR-Fast (Baidu)	Mercury 2 (Inception)
Input Price prompt tokens per 1M	$0.68	$0.25
Completion Price per 1M tokens	$2.81	$0.75
Sample Workload Cost 1M input + 500K output	$2.08	$0.62
Context Window	65.54K	128K
Release Date	2026-04-20	2026-03-04

Use-Case Decision Matrix

Use case	Better pick	Why
Budget-constrained production	Mercury 2	On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, Mercury 2 is estimated at $0.62 vs $2.08 for Qianfan-OCR-Fast, saving $1.46 (70% lower).
High-volume input processing	Mercury 2	Lower prompt-token price matters most when prompts, retrieved passages, or documents dominate the bill.
Long responses and chatbots	Mercury 2	Lower output-token price matters most when assistants generate many completion tokens.
RAG or long-document work	Mercury 2	A larger context window leaves more room for retrieved passages, conversation history, or source files.

Related Alternatives

Same-provider lower-cost swaps

ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B Thinking can replace Qianfan-OCR-Fast when lower sample workload cost matters most: $0.21.
ERNIE 4.5 21B A3B can replace Qianfan-OCR-Fast when lower sample workload cost matters most: $0.21.
ERNIE 4.5 VL 28B A3B can replace Qianfan-OCR-Fast when lower sample workload cost matters most: $0.42.
ERNIE 4.5 300B A47B can replace Qianfan-OCR-Fast when lower sample workload cost matters most: $0.83.

Larger context near this budget

Llama 4 Scout offers 10M context with $0.23 sample workload cost.
Grok 4.20 offers 2M context with $2.5 sample workload cost.
Owl Alpha offers 1.05M context with $0 sample workload cost.
Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite offers 1.05M context with $1 sample workload cost.

Popular competitors

No popular competitor is currently available.

Cheaper alternatives

Review low-cost models sorted by a standard 1M input plus 500K output workload.

Open cheapest models

Larger context alternatives

Find models with larger context windows for RAG, long documents, and codebase review.

Open largest context models

Provider catalogs

Compare models within provider hubs before choosing a final API vendor.

Open provider hubs

Baidu catalog

Review all tracked Baidu models before deciding whether this matchup is the right shortlist.

Open Baidu models

Inception catalog

Check other Inception models with comparable pricing, context, or release timing.

Open Inception models

Qianfan-OCR-Fast

Qianfan-OCR-Fast is a domain-specific multimodal large model purpose-built for OCR. By leveraging specialized OCR training data while preserving versatile multimodal intelligence, it provides a powerful performance upgrade over Qianfan-OCR.

Mercury 2

Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM). Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2 produces and refines multiple tokens in parallel, achieving...