The price moved
Mercury 2.5’s launch discount ended at 07:00 UTC today, and the price is five times what it was yesterday
| Rate | Through 7 Sep | From 8 Sep |
|---|---|---|
| Input, per million tokens | $0.04 | $0.20 |
| Output, per million tokens | $0.15 | $0.75 |
| Cache read, per million tokens | $0.004 | $0.02 |
Inception’s 80 per cent launch discount on Mercury 2.5 Preview, routed through its own provider on OpenRouter, ran through 8 September at 07:00 UTC. Input goes to $0.20 per million tokens from $0.04. Output goes to $0.75 from $0.15, a uniform five times, and Inception’s site lists the same undiscounted rates. The output price is now identical to Mercury 2’s $0.75, so the new model’s premium is on input only, $0.20 against $0.25. What the five times buys over Mercury 2, on Inception’s own description, is tunable reasoning levels and a ten-point intelligence jump that Inception scores itself.
What it changes Re-check any budget that priced Mercury 2.5 at the promo rate; the discount was on the Inception route only, so other providers’ prices did not move.
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