Inception: Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is a reasoning model from Inception released on Feb 20, 2026. It reads text and writes text, with a 128K token context window and up to 50K tokens per reply.
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It costs $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens. Cached input bills at $0.025, 90% less than fresh input.
It supports tool calling, structured JSON output and prompt caching.
6 providers serve it, including Vercel AI Gateway, Kilo Gateway and NanoGPT.
- Modalities
- In / out price
- $0.25 / $0.75 per 1M
- Context
- 128K
- Max output
- 50K
- Released
- Feb 20, 2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- Jan 2025
- Tool calling
- Structured output
- Reasoning
- Prompt caching
- Open weights
- Free to use
Mercury 2 pricing
USD, as listed on Oct 15, 2026. Most bills are input heavy, so the cached input rate matters as much as the headline price.
| Input | $0.25 / 1M tokens | |
|---|---|---|
| Output | $0.75 / 1M tokens | |
| Cached input (read) | $0.025 / 1M tokens | 90% off input |
Mercury 2 providers
6 providers serve it, including Vercel AI Gateway, Kilo Gateway and NanoGPT. Each host sets its own price and limits, so the cheapest one is not always the one with the longest context.
| Provider | Input /M | Output /M | Cache read /M | Context | Max output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inception First party | $0.25 | $0.75 | $0.025 | 128K | 50K |
| Vercel AI Gateway | $0.25 | $0.75 | $0.025 | 128K | 50K |
| Kilo Gateway | $0.25 | $0.75 | $0.025 | 128K | 50K |
| NanoGPT | $0.25 | $0.75 | $0.025 | 128K | 50K |
| Venice AI | $0.3125 | $0.9375 | $0.0313 | 128K | 50K |
| AI/ML API | $0.3439 | $1.03 | $0.0344 | 128K | 50K |
What Mercury 2 costs per month
Pick a workload close to yours or type your own volumes.
Supported request parameters
What you can set when you call Mercury 2 through an OpenAI compatible API.
- Tools
tools - Structured outputs
structured_outputs - Reasoning
reasoning - Temperature
temperature
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Mercury 2 questions
How much does the Mercury 2 API cost?
$0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens, with cached input at $0.025. The estimator on this page turns that into a monthly bill for your own workload.
What is the context window of Mercury 2?
128,000 tokens of input, and it can write up to 50,000 tokens in one reply. As a rough guide, a million tokens is around 750,000 English words.
Which providers serve Mercury 2?
6 providers serve it, including Vercel AI Gateway, Kilo Gateway and NanoGPT. Prices differ by host, so the Providers table on this page lists each one with its input and output price.
Does Mercury 2 support tool calling?
Yes. It accepts tool definitions and can return JSON that matches a schema, which is what an agent needs to call your APIs.
Is Mercury 2 open source?
No. Inception serves it through an API only, so you cannot download the weights or host it yourself.
When was Mercury 2 released?
Feb 20, 2026, with training data up to Jan 2025.
Catalog data from models.dev (MIT licensed), refreshed daily, last on Oct 15, 2026. The summary is written from these facts.
Building on Mercury 2?
I test your real tasks on it and the two closest alternatives, then ship the agent on whichever wins on cost and accuracy.
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