API cost decision in 10 seconds

NewPerceptron Mk1 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 $0.9 for Perceptron Mk1, saving $0.28 (30.6% lower).

Cost-first pickMercury 2

Context-first pickMercury 2

Sample savings$0.2830.6%

10x traffic gap$2.75

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 $2.75. Use the calculator below to replace the sample workload with your own token volume.

Cost sensitivity

Workload Sensitivity

Same prices, different token mixes.

Cost winner changes by workload shape: input-heavy / RAG favors Perceptron Mk1, balanced workload favors Mercury 2, and output-heavy chatbot favors Mercury 2.

Workload shape	Token mix	Better pick	Perceptron Mk1	Mercury 2
Input-heavy / RAG	5M input + 500K output	Perceptron Mk1	$1.5	$1.62
Balanced workload	1M input + 1M output	Mercury 2	$1.65	$1
Output-heavy chatbot	1M input + 5M output	Mercury 2	$7.65	$4

Cheaper input Perceptron Mk1 $0.15 vs $0.25 / 1M

Perceptron Mk1 is $0.1 cheaper per 1M input tokens (40% lower; 1.67x difference).

Cheaper output Mercury 2 $1.5 vs $0.75 / 1M

Mercury 2 is $0.75 cheaper per 1M output tokens (50% lower; 2x difference).

Larger context Mercury 2 32.77K vs 128K

Mercury 2 has 95.23K more context (3.91x larger).

Sample workload Mercury 2 $0.9 vs $0.62

Mercury 2 is $0.28 cheaper on the standard workload (30.6% lower).

Estimate your workload cost

Your Workload Cost

Prices are normalized to USD per 1M tokens.

Monthly input tokens Monthly output tokens

Perceptron Mk1 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

Perceptron Mk1 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 $0.9 for Perceptron Mk1 and $0.62 for Mercury 2.

Best Fit

Choose Perceptron Mk1 when you care most about lower input-token price.

Choose Mercury 2 when you care most about 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 $0.9 for Perceptron Mk1, saving $0.28 (30.6% lower).
Mercury 2 is $0.28 cheaper on the standard workload (30.6% lower).
Perceptron Mk1 is $0.1 cheaper per 1M input tokens (40% lower; 1.67x difference).
Mercury 2 is $0.75 cheaper per 1M output tokens (50% lower; 2x difference).
Mercury 2 has 95.23K more context (3.91x larger).

Head-to-Head Specs

Feature	NewPerceptron Mk1 (Perceptron)	Mercury 2 (Inception)
Input Price prompt tokens per 1M	$0.15	$0.25
Completion Price per 1M tokens	$1.5	$0.75
Sample Workload Cost 1M input + 500K output	$0.9	$0.62
Context Window	32.77K	128K
Release Date	2026-05-12	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 $0.9 for Perceptron Mk1, saving $0.28 (30.6% lower).
High-volume input processing	Perceptron Mk1	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

No lower-cost same-provider swap is currently tracked for this pair.

Larger context near this budget

Llama 4 Scout offers 10M context with $0.23 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.
DeepSeek V4 Pro offers 1.05M context with $0.87 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

Perceptron catalog

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

Open Perceptron models

Inception catalog

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

Open Inception models

Perceptron Mk1

Perceptron Mk1 (Mark One) is Perceptron's highest-quality vision-language model for video and embodied reasoning.** It accepts image and video inputs paired with natural language queries, and produces detailed visual understanding...

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...