Mercury 2 vs Granite 4.0 Micro: pricing comparison
Granite 4.0 Micro is the cheaper option at $0.02/$0.11 per 1M input/output tokens — Mercury 2 ($0.25/$0.75) costs about 15x more per input token. Full spec-by-spec breakdown below.
| Mercury 2 | Granite 4.0 Micro | |
|---|---|---|
| Input /1M tokens | $0.25 | $0.02 |
| Output /1M tokens | $0.75 | $0.11 |
| Cache read /1M | $0.02 | — |
| Context window | 128K | 131K |
| Provider | Inception | Ibm-granite |
| Vision input | No | No |
| Released | Mar 2026 | Oct 2025 |
Real workload costs: Mercury 2 vs Granite 4.0 Micro
Cost per single request at common token profiles — the cheapest model for each workload is highlighted.
| Workload | Tokens (in / out) | Mercury 2 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chatbot message | 500 / 300 | $0.0003 | <$0.0001 |
| RAG query with context | 4,000 / 500 | $0.0014 | $0.0001 |
| Document summarization | 20,000 / 1,000 | $0.0057 | $0.0005 |
| Agent coding session | 100,000 / 5,000 | $0.03 | $0.0023 |
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper: Mercury 2 vs Granite 4.0 Micro?
Granite 4.0 Micro is the cheapest on input tokens at $0.02 per 1M, and Granite 4.0 Micro is cheapest on output at $0.11 per 1M. Mercury 2 costs about 15x more per input token than Granite 4.0 Micro.
How much does Mercury 2 cost per 1M tokens?
Mercury 2 costs $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens on the Inception API, with a 128K-token context window.
How much does Granite 4.0 Micro cost per 1M tokens?
Granite 4.0 Micro costs $0.02 per 1M input tokens and $0.11 per 1M output tokens on the Ibm-granite API, with a 131K-token context window.
What does a typical request cost on Mercury 2 vs Granite 4.0 Micro?
For a typical request with 2,000 input and 500 output tokens: Mercury 2 costs $0.0009, Granite 4.0 Micro costs <$0.0001. At 1,000 requests/day for a month that is $26.25 for Mercury 2 vs $2.70 for Granite 4.0 Micro.
Estimate your own workload with the per-model calculators (Mercury 2, Granite 4.0 Micro), browse all current prices on the live model pricing dashboard, or run these models head-to-head on a real prompt (free account required). Prices may differ from provider list prices for batch or tiered usage.
Pricing data via the OpenRouter models API.