AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini vs Inception: Mercury 2: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini (aion-labs/aion-3.5-mini) vs Inception: Mercury 2 (inception/mercury-2). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini (aion-labs/aion-3.5-mini) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.35/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
Inception: Mercury 2 (inception/mercury-2) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Inception: Mercury 2: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.125/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini (API ID: aion-labs/aion-3.5-mini) vs Inception: Mercury 2 (API ID: inception/mercury-2), Inception: Mercury 2 offers lower standard input pricing at $0.25/1M tokens ($0.75/1M output), while Inception: Mercury 2 leads in cached prefix economics at $0.125/1M tokens (50% discount). AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini achieves a 0ms faster P90 time-to-first-token latency (280ms vs 280ms).
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
| Specification / FinOps Dimension | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini | Inception: Mercury 2 | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | aion-labs/aion-3.5-mini | inception/mercury-2 | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0.7 / $1.4 | $0.25 / $0.75 | Inception: Mercury 2 |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0.35/1M (50% Off) | $0.125/1M (50% Off) | Inception: Mercury 2 |
| Context Window / Max Output | 256K In / 32K Out | 125K In / 49K Out | Inception: Mercury 2 |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 280ms | AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini (-0ms) |
Aion 3.5 Mini is a multi-model roleplaying and storytelling system from AionLabs, built on the GLM family of models. It is the smaller, lower-cost sibling of Aion 3.5 and uses...
Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM). Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2 produces and refines multiple token
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 AionLabs: Aion 3.5 Mini to Inception: Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM). Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2 produces and refines multiple token Verified P90 latency of 280ms.