Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.2 | $0.25 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.8 | $0.75 |
Verdict. Mercury 2 takes the aggregate benchmark matchup 2–0 across 2 categories. Real workloads usually care about a handful of specific tasks — see the per-benchmark table above.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.1× the per-million-token cost, Mercury 2 is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Mercury 2 makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is strongest on Intelligence Index (9.9). Mercury 2 leads on Coding Index (31.1), Intelligence Index (21.9).
Speed. On throughput, Mercury 2 generates tokens at 835 tok/s versus 109 tok/s — about 87% faster. On time-to-first-token, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct responds in 2140ms vs 3930ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.
Provider. Alibaba and Inception sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Alibaba tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Inception often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs $18.00 ($216/year); Mercury 2 costs $18.75 ($225/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct ≈ $2.60/run, Mercury 2 ≈ $2.75/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct ≈ $120/run, Mercury 2 ≈ $125/run. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.35/M tokens vs $0.38/M for Mercury 2.
Mercury 2 wins 2 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Mercury 2 generates tokens faster at 835 tok/s vs 109 tok/s. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct also has lower time-to-first-token (2.14s vs 3.93s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct for lower cost, Mercury 2 for stronger benchmark performance, and Mercury 2 for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.