Choose Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview if…
- cost matters at scale — it is 86% cheaper on a typical 3:1 input/output mix ($6.00 vs $41.75 a month for 50,000 support chats)
- you want the newer model — released 2026-08-31, 11 months after the other
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview vs Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking
Neither wins outright: Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview is the pick when cost matters at scale, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking when you need image input.
Key numbers
| Spec | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Qwen |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.04 | $0.29 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.15 | $1.00 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.07 | $0.47 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 85% | 54% |
| Context window | 260K tokens (~390 pages) | 262K tokens (~393 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 47% | 48% |
| Max output per response | 66K tokens (~49,200 words) | 236K tokens (~176,900 words) |
| Input types | text | text, image |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2026-08-31 | 2025-10-06 |
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What it costs for real workloads
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $6.00 | $41.75 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview saves $35.75 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $6.30 | $44.80 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview saves $38.50 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $6.60 | $46.80 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview saves $40.20 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $4.10 | $29.20 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview saves $25.10 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $2.15 | $15.50 | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview saves $13.35 |
Capabilities side by side
| Capability | Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | — | ✓ Yes | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | — | — | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | — | — | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | — | — | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | — | — | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
Price history
- Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview: price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-09-02.
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking: input price raised 31% ($0.20 → $0.29/1M), output price cut 58% ($2.40 → $1.00/1M) on 2026-10-10 (3 price changes since 2026-03-10).
| Date | Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking | $0.29 | $1.00 |
| 2026-08-06 | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking | $0.20 | $2.40 |
| 2026-03-31 | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking | $0.13 | $1.56 |
Which should you choose?
Choose Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking if…
- you need image input — to read screenshots, charts and scanned pages; Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview does not advertise it
- you generate long outputs in one go — up to 236K tokens (about 176,900 words) per response
Frequently asked questions
Is Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview better than Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking?
Neither wins outright: Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview is the pick when cost matters at scale, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking when you need image input. In short: Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview when cost matters at scale, you want the newer model; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking when you need image input, you generate long outputs in one go.
Which is cheaper, Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking?
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview is cheaper: $0.07 vs $0.47 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 86% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $6.00 against $41.75.
How much do Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview and Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking cost per million tokens?
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview costs $0.04 per 1M input tokens and $0.15 per 1M output tokens; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking costs $0.29 input and $1.00 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Which has the bigger context window, Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking?
Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking: 262K tokens, about 393 pages, against 260K (about 390 pages) for Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview.
Do Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview and Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking support function calling and JSON output?
Tool calling — Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview: yes, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking: yes. JSON-schema structured output — Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview: yes, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking: yes.
Can Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking read images?
Only Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking accepts image input; Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview is text-only for input.
Is Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking free to use?
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
What is the maximum output length of Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview and Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking?
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview can write up to 66K tokens (about 49,200 words) per response; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking up to 236K (about 176,900 words).
When were Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview and Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking released?
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview was listed on 2026-08-31; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking on 2025-10-06.
Has the price of Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking changed?
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview: price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-09-02. Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking: input price raised 31% ($0.20 → $0.29/1M), output price cut 58% ($2.40 → $1.00/1M) on 2026-10-10 (3 price changes since 2026-03-10).
About the two models
Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview
Mercury 2.5 is the fastest reasoning LLM, and the latest diffusion LLM (dLLM) from Inception. Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2.5 produces and refines multiple tokens in parallel, achieving...
Full Inception: Mercury 2.5 Preview specs →Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking
Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Thinking is a multimodal model that unifies strong text generation with visual understanding for images and videos. Its Thinking variant enhances reasoning in STEM, math, and complex tasks. It excels...
Full Qwen: Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking specs →