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Model

Mercury 2

Inception Mercury 2 — pricing, 128k context window, API cost calculator and alternatives.

By Inception

🔧 Tools Function calling — the model can structure responses as tool calls with typed arguments. Reliability differs between providers. Glossary → {} JSON Forces output to be valid JSON, reducing parse errors. Some providers also let you constrain to a schema. Glossary →
Context window Maximum tokens (input + output) the model can process in a single request. Glossary →
128,000
tokens
Input price What the model charges for tokens you send (prompt + context). Glossary →
$0.2500
per 1M tokens
Output price What the model charges for tokens it generates. Usually 3–5× pricier than input. Glossary →
$0.7500
per 1M tokens

Specs

Provider
Inception
Slug
inception/mercury-2
Capabilities
tools, json_mode

Pricing freshness

Tier
standard
Currency
USD
As of
2026-05-08 17:08 UTC
Estimate monthly cost → See alternatives to Mercury 2 →

Pricing history

Tracking Mercury 2 pricing since 2026-05-08. We'll plot the chart here once it changes.

Quickstart — call Mercury 2 from your app

curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "inception/mercury-2",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'

Official docs: https://openrouter.ai/docs

Related models

Similar capabilities, context window, and price tier — drawn from across the catalog so you can compare alternatives in one click.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 is a large language model API from Inception with a 128k-token context window. It costs $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens.

How much does Mercury 2 cost?

Mercury 2 is priced at $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens via the Inception API. A 50/50 input/output workload of 1M total tokens costs about $0.5.

What is the context window of Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 supports up to 128k tokens of context per request — roughly 256 pages of English text or 16000 lines of code at a typical density.

Does Mercury 2 support vision, tool use, or JSON mode?

Mercury 2 supports tool/function calling and structured JSON mode. It does not support image input (vision).

Who makes Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 is built and operated by Inception. Pricing, context window, and capabilities on this page are refreshed nightly from Inception's public catalog.

Can I self-host Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 is API-only — its weights are not publicly distributed by Inception, so it cannot be self-hosted today.

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