Inception: Mercury 2.5 vs Meta Llama 4 Scout: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing Inception: Mercury 2.5 (inception/mercury-2.5) vs Meta Llama 4 Scout (llama-4-scout). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
Inception: Mercury 2.5 (inception/mercury-2.5) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Inception: Mercury 2.5: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.02/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
Meta Llama 4 Scout (llama-4-scout) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Meta Llama 4 Scout: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.225/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing Inception: Mercury 2.5 (API ID: inception/mercury-2.5) vs Meta Llama 4 Scout (API ID: llama-4-scout), Inception: Mercury 2.5 offers lower standard input pricing at $0.04/1M tokens ($0.15/1M output), while Inception: Mercury 2.5 leads in cached prefix economics at $0.02/1M tokens (50% discount). Meta Llama 4 Scout achieves a 140ms faster P90 time-to-first-token latency (140ms vs 280ms).
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
Enable Prompt Context Caching & Batch API to reduce repeated system prompt input token burn by 50%-97.5%.
| Specification / FinOps Dimension | Inception: Mercury 2.5 | Meta Llama 4 Scout | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | inception/mercury-2.5 | llama-4-scout | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0.04 / $0.15 | $0.45 / $0.65 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0.02/1M (50% Off) | $0.225/1M (50% Off) | Inception: Mercury 2.5 |
| Context Window / Max Output | 254K In / 64K Out | 400K In / 128K Out | Meta Llama 4 Scout |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 140ms | Meta Llama 4 Scout (-140ms) |
Mercury 2.5 is the fastest reasoning LLM, and the latest diffusion LLM (dLLM) from Inception. Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2.5 produces and refines multiple t
Meta open-weight multimodal MoE model supporting 10M+ extended context on dedicated clusters.
Real-Time Stack Cost & Hidden-Fee Simulator (MAU / Token / Egress / GMV)
Calibrated with Reddit r/FinOps & r/devops telemetry: Includes Context Caching, Bandwidth Egress, and MoR Tax
🦙Switch from Inception: Mercury 2.5 to Meta Llama 4 Scout
Meta open-weight multimodal MoE model supporting 10M+ extended context on dedicated clusters. Verified P90 latency of 140ms.