Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 17, 2026noindex (thin pair)
In this head-to-head showdown, Inception: Mercury 2 is more budget-friendly at $0.75/1M per 1M output tokens. Review the complete breakdown below to determine which model best fits your performance and budget requirements.
Auto-discovered from OpenRouter (inception/mercury-2). Preview until a second source matches.
ByteDance Seed 2.1 Turbo, listed on public model timelines as an Aug 10 2026 API drop.
Single model data
No latency data
$0.75 / 1M output
Relative percentile scores computed across all active models in the benchmark catalog.
Each spoke is a skill. Farther from the center is better (0–100th percentile). Tap any dot to inspect details.
Category wins across reasoning intelligence, generation speed, and token cost.
Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy
Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness
Cost per million tokens and max context window length
| Benchmark | Inception: Mercury 2 | Seed 2.1 Turbo | Advantage Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preference Elo | — | — | |
| Coding Elo | — | — | |
| LiveBench | — | — | |
| SWE-bench | — | — | |
| GPQA Diamond | — | — | |
| Time to first token | — | — | |
| Output speed | — | 160 tok/s | — |
| Input price | $0.25/1M | $0.5/1M | Inception: Mercury 2 (+$0.25/1M) |
| Output price | $0.75/1M | $2.5/1M | Inception: Mercury 2 (+$1.75/1M) |
| Context window | Seed 2.1 Turbo (+134k) |
Simulate monthly production API costs in USD (US Dollar).
Inception: Mercury 2 is estimated to save $35.00/month ($420/year).
Need SWE-bench on both sides.
Lower output list price ($0.75/1M).
Need TTFT on both sides.
Larger window (262k).
Seed 2.1 Turbo is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.
| Target Workload | Recommended Pick | Evaluation Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Repo / coding agents | insufficient data | Need SWE-bench on both sides. |
| High-volume chat | Inception: Mercury 2 | Lower output list price ($0.75/1M). |
| Voice / low-latency UI | insufficient data | Need TTFT on both sides. |
| Long-document RAG | Seed 2.1 Turbo | Larger window (262k). |
| Screenshots / vision | Seed 2.1 Turbo | Seed 2.1 Turbo is the side marked multimodal in the catalog. |
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Verified head-to-head card
