Meta Llama 4 Scout vs Inception: Mercury 2: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing Meta Llama 4 Scout (llama-4-scout) vs Inception: Mercury 2 (inception/mercury-2). 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 (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 Meta Llama 4 Scout (API ID: llama-4-scout) 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). 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 | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | llama-4-scout | inception/mercury-2 | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0.45 / $0.65 | $0.25 / $0.75 | Inception: Mercury 2 |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0.225/1M (50% Off) | $0.125/1M (50% Off) | Inception: Mercury 2 |
| Context Window / Max Output | 400K In / 128K Out | 125K In / 49K 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 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 Meta Llama 4 Scout 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.