R1 0528 vs Mercury 2.5
R1 0528 leads Mercury 2.5 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 13.1 to 12.3, and Mercury 2.5 costs 14.5x less per output token ($0.15 vs $2.18 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 4 benchmarks have a result for both.
R1 0528 or Mercury 2.5: which to pick
Only Mercury 2.5 has a coding score, 1.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; R1 0528 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick R1 0528 for work measured by ALE-Bench or AA Intelligence Index, where it leads.
- Shared results
- 4
- R1 0528 only
- 56
- Mercury 2.5 only
- 18
- Like-for-like categories
- 4 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Mercury 2.5 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
R1 0528
R1 0528 leads, 13.1 against 12.3.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only R1 0528 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1149.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5 takes 260K tokens against 164K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mercury 2.5
R1 0528 $0.0016, Mercury 2.5 $0.0001 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- R1 0528 not benchmarked, Mercury 2.5 1.6 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Coding, 16.7 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- ALE-Bench: R1 0528 804.1 against Mercury 2.5 301.6, 16.7 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- R1 0528 $2.18 against Mercury 2.5 $0.15 per million output tokens, 14.5x apart.
- Context window
- R1 0528 takes 164K tokens, Mercury 2.5 260K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | R1 0528 | Bars | Mercury 2.5 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 1 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 1 | 0 | ||
| General | 0 | 1 | ||
| All shared boards | 3 | 1 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index10
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | 71.4% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 3.7% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | Not measured | 4.5% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | Not measured | 2.4% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 34.5% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 18.1% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 45.5% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 77.0% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| SciCode | Not measured | 38.5% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 15.9% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| WeirdML | 41.6% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 804.1 | 301.6 | R1 0528 |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1427 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1435 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 24 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 13.1 | 12.3 | R1 0528 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | Not measured | 18.9% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 2.5% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 4.3% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 8.8% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 36.5% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| METR time horizons | 53.8% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| DeepResearch Bench | 35.1% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| BrowseComp-Plus | 16.4% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 32 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 81.3% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 15.8% | 11.8% | R1 0528 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 76.3% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 21.2% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 1.1% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| SimpleBench | 40.8% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1415 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1394 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1422 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Math Index | 76.0 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 76.0% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 66.4% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| ProofBench | Not measured | 3.0% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| MATH level 5 | 96.6% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1400 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1415 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 83.1% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 31.3% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 84.9% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1430 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1445 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1419 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1402 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1149 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1100 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1097 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1182 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1110 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1138 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1038 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 2 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 45.3% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 55.1% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| IFBench | 39.6% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 55.7% | 71.7% | Mercury 2.5 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 75.0% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | 81.9% | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1428 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1382 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1405 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1437 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1412 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1442 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1404 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1391 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1360 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1417 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1411 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1423 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1428 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1405 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1391 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1402 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1400 | Not measured | Only R1 0528 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 23 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | R1 0528 | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mercury 2.5 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Mercury 2.5 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Mercury 2.5 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | DeepSeek R1 0528 | Inception Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | DeepSeek | Inception |
| Weights | Open weights | No public weights listed |
| Released | May 28, 2025 | September 8, 2026 |
| Context window | 164K | 260K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.50 | $0.04 |
| Output $/Mtok | $2.18 | $0.15 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | 1.6 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is R1 0528 better than Mercury 2.5 for coding?
Only Mercury 2.5 has a coding score, 1.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; R1 0528 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick R1 0528 for work measured by ALE-Bench or AA Intelligence Index, where it leads.
Which is cheaper, R1 0528 or Mercury 2.5?
R1 0528 costs $0.50 per million input tokens and $2.18 per million output tokens; Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04 and $0.15. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, R1 0528 or Mercury 2.5?
Mercury 2.5, with 260K tokens against 164K.
How many benchmarks is the R1 0528 vs Mercury 2.5 comparison based on?
4 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. R1 0528's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Mercury 2.5's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.