NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) vs Inception: Mercury 2: Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) (nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free) vs Inception: Mercury 2 (inception/mercury-2). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) (nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free): Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0/1M) 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 NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) (API ID: nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free) vs Inception: Mercury 2 (API ID: inception/mercury-2), NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) offers lower standard input pricing at $0/1M tokens ($0/1M output), while NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) leads in cached prefix economics at $0/1M tokens (50% discount). NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) 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 | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) | Inception: Mercury 2 | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free | inception/mercury-2 | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0 / $0 | $0.25 / $0.75 | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0/1M (50% Off) | $0.125/1M (50% Off) | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) |
| Context Window / Max Output | 977K In / 64K Out | 125K In / 49K Out | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 280ms | NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) (-0ms) |
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is an open frontier-reasoning and orchestration model from NVIDIA, with 55B active parameters out of 550B total (MoE). Built on a hybrid Transformer-Mamba m
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 NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) 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.