Mercury 2 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Price, context window & benchmark comparison

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Mercury 2

Inception
$0.25 / $0.75
Input / Output · per 1M tokens
VS
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Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

NVIDIA
$0.08 / $0.20
Input / Output · per 1M tokens
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Verdict: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 3.4× cheaper than Mercury 2 on a typical 3:1 input/output mix. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has the larger context window (262K vs 128K).
Mercury 2Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Input price / 1M$0.25$0.08
Output price / 1M$0.75$0.20
Blended price (3:1)$0.38$0.11
Cached input / 1M$0.025$0.04
Context window128K262K
Max output50K131K
Intelligence index12.9
Coding index31.126.8
Providers4
Best provider uptime (30m)100.0%
Vision inputNoNo
ReasoningYesYes
Tool callingYesYes
Released2026-03-042026-08-11
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FAQ

Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is 3.4× cheaper than Mercury 2 on a typical 3:1 input/output mix.

Mercury 2 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: which has a bigger context window?

Mercury 2: 128,000 tokens. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 262,144 tokens.

How much would 1 million requests cost?

At 2,000 input + 500 output tokens per request: Mercury 2 ≈ $875.00, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning ≈ $260.00.

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