Meta Llama 4 Scout vs Inception: Mercury 2.5: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing Meta Llama 4 Scout (llama-4-scout) vs Inception: Mercury 2.5 (inception/mercury-2.5). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
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.
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.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing Meta Llama 4 Scout (API ID: llama-4-scout) vs Inception: Mercury 2.5 (API ID: inception/mercury-2.5), 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).
Enable Prompt Context Caching & Batch API to reduce repeated system prompt input token burn by 50%-97.5%.
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
| Specification / FinOps Dimension | Meta Llama 4 Scout | Inception: Mercury 2.5 | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | llama-4-scout | inception/mercury-2.5 | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0.45 / $0.65 | $0.04 / $0.15 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0.225/1M (50% Off) | $0.02/1M (50% Off) | Inception: Mercury 2.5 |
| Context Window / Max Output | 400K In / 128K Out | 254K In / 64K Out | Meta Llama 4 Scout |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 140ms | 280ms | Meta Llama 4 Scout (-140ms) |
Meta open-weight multimodal MoE model supporting 10M+ extended context on dedicated clusters.
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
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 Meta Llama 4 Scout to Inception: Mercury 2.5
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 Verified P90 latency of 280ms.