Inception: Mercury 2 vs IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing Inception: Mercury 2 (inception/mercury-2) vs IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro (ibm-granite/granite-4.0-h-micro). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
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.
IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro (ibm-granite/granite-4.0-h-micro) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.0085/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing Inception: Mercury 2 (API ID: inception/mercury-2) vs IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro (API ID: ibm-granite/granite-4.0-h-micro), IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro offers lower standard input pricing at $0.017/1M tokens ($0.112/1M output), while IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro leads in cached prefix economics at $0.0085/1M tokens (50% discount). Inception: Mercury 2 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 | Inception: Mercury 2 | IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | inception/mercury-2 | ibm-granite/granite-4.0-h-micro | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0.25 / $0.75 | $0.017 / $0.112 | IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0.125/1M (50% Off) | $0.0085/1M (50% Off) | IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro |
| Context Window / Max Output | 125K In / 49K Out | 128K In / 115K Out | IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 280ms | Inception: Mercury 2 (-0ms) |
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
Granite-4.0-H-Micro is a 3B parameter from the Granite 4 family of models. These models are the latest in a series of models released by IBM. They are fine-tuned for long...
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 to IBM: Granite 4.0 Micro
Granite-4.0-H-Micro is a 3B parameter from the Granite 4 family of models. These models are the latest in a series of models released by IBM. They are fine-tuned for long... Verified P90 latency of 280ms.