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Head-to-head comparison

Mercury 2.5 vs Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1

Mercury 2.5 (Inception Labs) and Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 (NVIDIA) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.

Snapshot as of 23 September 2026

As of 23 September 2026, Mercury 2.5 holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#136 vs #140).

Which should you choose?

Choose Mercury 2.5 if…

  • you want the stronger overall ModelCap Index position — #136 against #140 (41.5 vs 40.2 points).
  • you want provider choice — 1 listed API providers against 0.
  • you want the more recently listed model — Mercury 2.5 was listed 8 September 2026, Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 7 April 2025.

Choose Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 if…

  • ModelCap publishes no field on which Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 leads Mercury 2.5 for this pair.

Mercury 2.5 vs Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1: specs, pricing and context

Specification comparison of Mercury 2.5 and Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1
FieldMercury 2.5Inception LabsLlama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1NVIDIA
ModelCap Index position#136#140
Index score41.540.2
EvidenceEstimatedMeasured
Input price / 1M tokens$0.04Unlisted
Output price / 1M tokens$0.15Unlisted
Context window260K tokens— tokens
Max output tokens66K—
API providers listed10
Weight accessAPI onlyRestricted license
Input modalitiesTextText
First listed8 September 20267 April 2025
PublisherInception LabsNVIDIA

Evidence: global-corpus-prior over 215 held-out anchors (22%); opens from measured predecessor inception/mercury-2 (79%); shrunk 4.2 up toward the measured corpus · 2 public benchmark observations across 2 boards. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.

Benchmark scores: Mercury 2.5 vs Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1

Public benchmark boards where Mercury 2.5 or Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 has a published result
BoardMercury 2.5Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1Leads
Arena codingArena (LMArena)—13911362–1421Only one result
BFCL V4UC Berkeley (Gorilla)—10.0Function callingOnly one result

Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.

Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.

Mercury 2.5 vs Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1: common questions

Is Mercury 2.5 better than Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1?

Mercury 2.5 ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 23 September 2026: #136 against #140. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it. Their published uncertainty intervals overlap, so the rank difference alone does not establish a reliable capability advantage for your workload.

Is Mercury 2.5 cheaper than Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1?

At least one of the two has no listed API price on ModelCap right now, so no price comparison is made.

Which has the bigger context window, Mercury 2.5 or Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1?

Both publish a 260K-token context window.

Which is better for coding, Mercury 2.5 or Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1?

The two models do not share a coding benchmark board on ModelCap yet, so no head-to-head coding score is published; the ModelCap Index position is the closest overall signal.

Are Mercury 2.5 and Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 open-weight models?

Mercury 2.5: API only. Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1: Restricted license. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.

Where can I run Mercury 2.5 and Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1?

ModelCap currently lists 1 API provider for Mercury 2.5 and 0 for Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.

How current is this Mercury 2.5 vs Llama 3 1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 comparison?

Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 23 September 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.

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