Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Mercury 2.5
Side-by-side API pricing and Artificial Analysis performance for Claude Haiku 4.5 (Anthropic) and Mercury 2.5 (Inception). Green cells mark the better value in each row.
Prices updated Sep 18, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC · refreshed hourly
| Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic | Mercury 2.5 Inception | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Input $/1M | $1.00 | $0.04 |
| Output $/1M | $5.00 | $0.15 |
| Blended $/1M (3:1) | $2.00 | $0.068 |
| RAG example (30K in / 2K out) | $0.04 | $0.0015 |
| Quality & speed | ||
| Intelligence Index | 17.6 | — |
| Coding Index | 43.9 | — |
| Agentic Index | 10.3 | — |
| Output speed (tok/s) | — | — |
| Time to first token | — | — |
| Specs | ||
| Context window | 200K | 260K |
| Input modalities | text, image, file | text |
FAQ
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Mercury 2.5?
Mercury 2.5 has the lower blended API price at $0.068 per 1M tokens (3:1 input:output mix), versus $2.00 for the other model. Prices are live from OpenRouter and refresh about hourly.
Which is better for RAG workloads?
For a typical RAG request (30K input / 2K output tokens), Mercury 2.5 costs about $0.0015 per request versus $0.04. Also compare context windows: Claude Haiku 4.5 offers 200K and Mercury 2.5 offers 260K.
Which scores higher on Artificial Analysis benchmarks?
Claude Haiku 4.5 leads on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (17.6 vs —). Check coding and agentic indices on this page for workload-specific tradeoffs.