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Head-to-head comparison

Mercury 2.5 vs Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B

Mercury 2.5 (Inception Labs) and Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B (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 9 September 2026

As of 9 September 2026, Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#108 vs #111).

Which should you choose?

Choose Mercury 2.5 if…

  • 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, Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B 18 March 2026.

Choose Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B if…

  • you want the stronger overall ModelCap Index position — #108 against #111 (38.4 vs 37.3 points).

Mercury 2.5 vs Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B: specs, pricing and context

Specification comparison of Mercury 2.5 and Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B
FieldMercury 2.5Inception LabsNemotron Cascade 2 30B A3BNVIDIA
ModelCap Index position#111#108
Index score37.338.4
EvidenceEstimatedEstimated
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 202618 March 2026
PublisherInception LabsNVIDIA

Evidence: global-corpus-prior over 182 held-out anchors (23%); opens from measured predecessor inception/mercury-2 (78%); shrunk 4.7 up toward the measured corpus · publisher-corpus-prior over 182 held-out anchors (57%); launch card against 3 resolved peers on 11 rows (43%); exceeds every named peer on 3 of 11 rows; optimism haircut 0 from cross-lab-probe; shrunk 4.9 up toward the measured corpus. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.

Benchmark scores: Mercury 2.5 vs Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B

Public benchmark boards where Mercury 2.5 or Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B has a published result
BoardMercury 2.5Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3BLeads
AA Terminal-Bench 2.1Artificial Analysis—20.6%terminal-bench:2.1:terminus-2:e2b:pass-at-1:3-repeats:source-model="Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B":reasoning=trueOnly one result
AA τ²-Bench TelecomArtificial Analysis—53.2%tau2:telecom:dual-control:pass-at-1:3-repeats:source-model="Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B":reasoning=trueOnly one result
AA Humanity's Last ExamArtificial Analysis—12.0%hle:may-2025:text-only-2158:no-tools:pass-at-1:source-model="Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B":reasoning=trueOnly 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 Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B: common questions

Is Mercury 2.5 better than Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B?

Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 9 September 2026: #108 against #111. 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 Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B?

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 Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B?

Both publish a 260K-token context window.

Which is better for coding, Mercury 2.5 or Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B?

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 Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B open-weight models?

Mercury 2.5: API only. Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B: 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 Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B?

ModelCap currently lists 1 API provider for Mercury 2.5 and 0 for Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B, 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 Nemotron Cascade 2 30B A3B comparison?

Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 9 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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