OptimToken › Models by maker › Inception

Inception (Mercury) API pricing

As of 2026-10-22, the OptimToken catalogue holds 3 Inception models. All 3 sit in the Budget price tier. The cheapest is Mercury 2.5 at $0.04 per 1M input tokens and $0.15 per 1M output tokens. The most expensive is Mercury 2 at $0.25 input and $0.75 output, 5.1x the cheapest on blended price (30% input, 70% output). These are the prices we quote: a model sold by several hosts has other rates, listed on its own page.

Inception models and prices

Inception models, cheapest first on blended price (30% input, 70% output). USD per 1M tokens, data snapshot 2026-10-22.
Model	Input	Output	Batch (in / out)	Cache read	Context	Licence
Mercury 2.5	$0.04	$0.15	not published	$0.004	260K	Unknown
Mercury 3	$0.10	$0.35	not published	$0.01	1M	Unknown
Mercury 2	$0.25	$0.75	not published	$0.025	128K	Unknown

Published discounts: a prompt-cache read rate for all 3 and a batch rate for none. The most recent by release date is Mercury 3 (2026-10). Only Mercury 2 carries an Arena ELO score: 1344 (as of 2026-10-08).

Licences

No licence is recorded for these 3 models, so this page does not say whether they can be self-hosted.

Price changes since tracking began

Our daily price archive began on 2026-08-15 and holds a record for all 3 models. The price we quote has not changed for any of them since each was first recorded. Since tracking began, 2 of them joined the catalogue, most recently Mercury 3 on 2026-10-20. Last checked against the 2026-10-22 snapshot.

Other makers

Models by maker: every model in the catalogue, including makers with fewer than 3.

These are list prices.

Your real cost also depends on caching and batching, negotiated discounts, marketplace agreements, and the contracts you already have. OptimNow audits exactly that.

Get a FinOps review