Models

Grok 4.5 vs Mercury 2.5 Preview

Compare Grok 4.5 from Grok and Mercury 2.5 Preview from Inception on key metrics including benchmarks, price, context length, and other model features. Access both models and hundreds of others through the AIHubMix API.

GrokGrok 4.5InceptionMercury 2.5 Preview
Grok logo
Grok 4.5
Grok · text, image → text

Grok 4.5 was trained on datasets spanning knowledge in coding, science, engineering, and math. With both intelligent and efficient reasoning, Grok 4.5 excels at real engineering tasks and exceeds comparable leading models at these tasks.

Input$2.00 /M
Output$6.00 /M
Cache read$0.50 /M
80% off
Inception logo
Mercury 2.5 Preview
Inception · text → text

Mercury 2.5 is the latest diffusion-based large language model (dLLM) released by Inception. It is the fastest inference LLM; unlike the sequential token-by-token generation approach, Mercury 2.5 can generate and optimize multiple tokens in parallel, achieving a generation speed of 1,107 tokens per second on standard GPUs. Compared to Mercury 2, its intelligence has increased by more than 10 percentage points, and its quality rivals leading cost-optimized frontier models such as GPT-5.6 Luna (Low), Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, and Claude Haiku 4.5.

Input$0.20$0.04 /M
Output$0.75$0.15 /M
Cache read$0.02$0.00 /M

Pricing & Specifications

Prices are per million tokens. Time to First Token and throughput are rolling averages measured on AIHubMix.

Grok 4.5
Mercury 2.5 Preview
Input /M
$2.00
$0.20$0.0480%
Output /M
$6.00
$0.75$0.1580%
Cache read /M
$0.50
$0.02$0.0080%
Context length
500,000
260,000
Max output
500,000
260,000
Time to First Token
2.8 s
3.7 s
Throughput
28.6 tok/s
110.1 tok/s
Modalities
textimage
text
Supported Parameters
thinkingtoolsfunction callingstructured outputslong context
thinkingtools
API Formats
Released
July 2026
September 2, 2026

Promotional prices show the discounted rate; see each model page for promotion windows.

Activity Past 30 Days

Daily traffic served through AIHubMix — how demand for each model is trending.

grok-4.5mercury-2.5-preview

Tokens / day

-

Requests / day

-

Performance Past 3 Days

Measured on real AIHubMix traffic, hourly buckets. Gaps mean no traffic in that hour.

grok-4.5mercury-2.5-preview

Throughput (tok/s)

-

TTFT (s)

-

Uptime (%)

-

Cost calculator

Estimate your monthly bill for the same workload on each model.

Mercury 2.5 Preview
$23$4.65 /mo
Grok 4.5
$210 /mo

Monthly = daily × 30. Discounted rates applied where a promotion is active.

FAQ

Which is cheaper: Grok 4.5, Mercury 2.5 Preview?

Mercury 2.5 Preview: $0.15/M output tokens; Grok 4.5: $6.00/M. Use the cost calculator above to estimate your own workload.

Which responds faster?

Grok 4.5: 2.8s time to first token measured on AIHubMix; see the live performance charts above for how each model behaves across the day.

How large is each context window?

Grok 4.5 accepts 500,000 and Mercury 2.5 Preview accepts 260,000 input tokens. Maximum output per request is 500,000 tokens on Grok 4.5 and 260,000 tokens on Mercury 2.5 Preview.

Which one generates tokens faster?

Mercury 2.5 Preview at 110.1 tok/s and Grok 4.5 at 28.6 tok/s, measured as output throughput on AIHubMix — a separate metric from time to first token.

What inputs and capabilities does each model support?

Grok 4.5 accepts text and image input and supports thinking, tool calling, function calling, structured outputs and long context; Mercury 2.5 Preview accepts text input and supports thinking and tool calling.

Can I call Grok 4.5 and Mercury 2.5 Preview with the same API key?

Yes. AIHubMix serves every model on this page behind one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so switching between them is a one-line change to the model field — no second account, key or SDK.

Popular comparisons

Related model match-ups readers also look at.