The short answer
Mercury 2.5 is an Inception model priced at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens, with a 260K token context window. One standard answer, meaning 1,000 tokens in and 500 tokens out, costs $0.0001. Inside Whizi it costs 1 credit per message and needs the Powerhouse plan or above.
That makes it one of the cheaper models in the catalogue: 113 of the 119 priced models cost more per answer, and 5 cost less.
What Mercury 2.5 costs
List rates are what the provider charges per token. The cost of one standard answer is the more useful number, because it prices the same unit of work across every model regardless of how each one is billed.
| Input, per million tokens | $0.04 |
| Output, per million tokens | $0.15 |
| One standard answer | $0.0001 |
| One thousand answers | $0.1150 |
| Context window | 260K tokens |
| Credits per message in Whizi | 1 |
| Minimum Whizi plan | Powerhouse |
| Rank by cost, of 119 priced models | 6 |
Prices are the published Inception rates as carried by OpenRouter, last refreshed 2026-09-26. The full dataset covering all 130 models from 34 providers is the AI model cost index, which is free to reuse with attribution.
What it costs inside Whizi
Whizi meters messages in credits rather than tokens, and Mercury 2.5 is charged at 1 credit per message. The cost does not change with the length of your message or the length of the answer, so a one line question and a long document analysis cost the same.
| Plan | Price per month | Monthly credits | Messages on this model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Powerhouse | $49.99, or $34.99 billed yearly | 10,000 | 10,000 |
Mercury 2.5 is part of the Powerhouse catalogue. Anything not explicitly listed on the Starter or Pro tiers resolves to Powerhouse, which is the deliberate default for the frontier and specialist models. See plans and limits.
How it compares on price
Against the cheapest model in the index, Ling-3.0-flash at $0.000053 per answer, Mercury 2.5 costs 2.2 times more. Against the median, Mistral Large 4 at $0.0017, it costs 15.0 times less.
It is the only Inception model in the priced index, so there is no same-provider comparison to draw.
It is the cheapest Inception model in the priced index, so within this provider there is nothing to route down to.
The context window in practice
Mercury 2.5 accepts 260K tokens of context, which is roughly 390 pages of text. That is below the median for the priced catalogue.
Advertised context and usable context are not the same thing. Recall tends to degrade before the stated limit is reached, particularly for material in the middle of a long input, so the practical test is to upload a long document and ask about something buried halfway through rather than trusting the number.
The number matters most when you are working from your own files. If a document is too long for the model you picked, switching to a larger-context model in the same conversation carries the thread across, so you are not starting over. See switching models mid-conversation.
- Input $0.04 and output $0.15 per million tokens
- $0.0001 for one standard answer, $0.1150 for a thousand
- 260K token context window
- 1 credit per message inside Whizi
- Requires the Powerhouse plan or above
- Ranks 6 of 119 priced models by cost per answer
Frequently asked questions
How much does Mercury 2.5 cost?
$0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens at list rates, which works out to $0.0001 for one standard answer of 1,000 tokens in and 500 out, or $0.1150 for a thousand of them. Inside Whizi it is 1 credit per message on a monthly allowance, rather than metered per token.
Which Whizi plan includes Mercury 2.5?
Powerhouse and above, which is $49.99 per month or $34.99 billed yearly. At 1 credits per message, a Powerhouse allowance of 10,000 credits covers 10,000 messages on this model if you spend the whole allowance here, and most people mix in a 1 credit model for routine work so it goes further.
What is the context window of Mercury 2.5?
260K tokens, which is roughly 390 pages of text and sits below the median for the priced catalogue. Treat that as the ceiling rather than the working figure: recall usually degrades before the stated limit, especially for content in the middle of a long input.
Is Mercury 2.5 expensive compared to other models?
It ranks 6 of 119 priced models by cost per answer, so 113 cost more and 5 cost less. The spread across the whole catalogue is about 2000 times from cheapest to priciest, which is far wider than most people assume, so "expensive" only means anything relative to the specific alternative you would otherwise use.
