Mercury 3 pricing
$0.10 per 1M input tokens and $0.35 per 1M output tokens. In real work that is 0.03¢ per chat answer and 0.15¢ to summarize a 20-page PDF.
What Mercury 3 costs per task
Token counts estimated from a measured model of the same lab (Claude Haiku 5.5), rescaled by tokenizer. Reasoning tokens are billed as output.
| Task | Cost | Tokens used | Price rank | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer a chat question | 0.03¢$0.35 / 1,000 | 42 in · 739 out · 244 reasoning | 42 of 334 | estimated |
| Reply to a customer email | 0.02¢$0.22 / 1,000 | 253 in · 203 out · 346 reasoning | 62 of 334 | estimated |
| Write a 1,500-word blog post | 0.09¢$0.95 / 1,000 | 63 in · 2,494 out · 200 reasoning | 20 of 334 | estimated |
| Write 10 product descriptions | 0.13¢$1.29 / 1,000 | 318 in · 1,263 out · 2,342 reasoning | 38 of 334 | estimated |
| Translate 1,000 words | 0.07¢$0.66 / 1,000 | 1,283 in · 1,508 out | 52 of 334 | estimated |
| Proofread one page (500 words) | 0.04¢$0.40 / 1,000 | 691 in · 639 out · 304 reasoning | 39 of 334 | estimated |
| Summarize a 20-page PDF | 0.15¢$1.47 / 1,000 | 12,613 in · 470 out · 118 reasoning | 37 of 334 | estimated |
| Extract data from an invoice | 0.04¢$0.39 / 1,000 | 382 in · 402 out · 591 reasoning | 38 of 334 | estimated |
| Analyze a 200-row spreadsheet | ≥0.59¢$5.92 / 1,000 | 3,806 in · 396 out · 15,434 reasoning | 78 of 334 | estimated |
| Answer from 5 retrieved documents (RAG) | 0.09¢$0.90 / 1,000 | 3,631 in · 767 out · 753 reasoning | 46 of 334 | estimated |
| Classify 100 support tickets | 0.06¢$0.59 / 1,000 | 1,223 in · 374 out · 961 reasoning | 18 of 334 | estimated |
| Review 500 lines of code | 0.43¢$4.28 / 1,000 | 4,986 in · 2,282 out · 8,532 reasoning | 65 of 334 | estimated |
| Write a SQL query | 0.05¢$0.50 / 1,000 | 127 in · 588 out · 810 reasoning | 46 of 334 | estimated |
| Run a 50-step coding agent | 4.4¢$44.29 / 1,000 | 2,172,612 in · 14,565 out · 29,550 reasoning | 13 of 334 | modeled |
Price at every provider
List prices per 1M tokens (input / output) at each host serving Mercury 3 through OpenRouter today. Hosts can differ in quantization, context and speed.
| Provider | Input / output | Cached input | Context | Uptime |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I Inceptionunknown | $0.10 / $0.35 | $0.01 | 1M | 100% |
Price history
First seen in our price history on Oct 20, 2026 at $0.10 input / $0.35 output. The list price has not changed since.
FAQ
How much does Mercury 3 cost?
Mercury 3 costs $0.10 per 1 million input tokens and $0.35 per 1 million output tokens, with cached input at $0.01 (list price on Oct 20, 2026). In practice one chat answer costs about 0.03¢ and summarizing a 20-page PDF about 0.15¢.
Where is Mercury 3 cheapest?
Among 1 providers we track, the lowest list price today is at Inception: $0.10 input and $0.35 output per 1M tokens.
Does Mercury 3 charge for reasoning tokens?
Yes. Reasoning (thinking) tokens are billed as output tokens. That is why the cost per task can be much higher than the visible answer suggests - our task costs include them.
Is the Mercury 3 cost per task measured or estimated?
Estimated: Mercury 3 was not run directly. Tokens come from Claude Haiku 5.5 and are rescaled by the tokenizer of Inception. Real usage can differ.