Vendor

Inception models

3 models with the vendor's list prices per million tokens. None answers on this deployment yet - connect your own provider to route to them.

Models

0 available here

Cheapest (blended)

$0.07

Mercury 2.5

Median list price

$0.16

3:1 input to output per 1M tokens

Strongest

Mercury 2.5

intelligence index 12

Every Inception model

Newest first. Prices are the vendor's published rates per million tokens; click a model for the full specification.

Model	Released	Context	Input / 1M	Output / 1M	Intelligence	Capabilities
Mercury 3inception/mercury-3	Oct 16, 2026	1M	$0.10	$0.35	-	reasoning tools
Mercury 2.5inception/mercury-2.5	Sep 8, 2026	260K	$0.04	$0.15	12	reasoning tools
Mercury 2inception/mercury-2	Mar 4, 2026	128K	$0.25	$0.75	11	reasoning tools

Frequently asked

What is the cheapest Inception model?: Mercury 2.5 at $0.04 per 1M input tokens and $0.15 per 1M output tokens (vendor list price).
Which Inception model has the largest context window?: Mercury 3 accepts 1M tokens of context.
How do I route to Inception models with OpenSmartRoute?: Declare a target in targets.yaml with metadata.model set to the catalogue id (for example inception/mercury-3); the router scores it against every other target on cost, quality, latency and your policies for each request.

Route Inception with everything else

OpenSmartRoute picks the cheapest model that meets your quality bar per request, so a Inception flagship handles hard prompts while small models take the rest. Price a workload or try a routing decision live.

Cost estimator Playground Full catalogue

One of many

Inception answers when it is the best answer for the request - and only then.

The prices on this page are the vendor's own list prices. Behind the router they become one column in a scorecard: for every request the candidates from Inception are weighed against every other vendor on cost, quality prior, latency and your policy, and the trace records why the winner won. Bring your own Inception key or buy by the token here; the decision is the same.

Photo: RDNE Stock project

For the business

What it does for the vendor strategy.

One URL, every vendor
No vendor lock-in
Point your OpenAI-compatible client at one address; add, swap or retire providers in the catalogue without touching application code.
Every vendor side by side
89% less
Lower cost per request
On the 150-prompt benchmark the router spent 89% less than sending every prompt to the reference model, and the judged quality went up, not down.
Read the benchmark
Self-hosting is free
Open source, Apache-2.0
The router is a library, a sidecar or a control plane you can run yourself, so the exit is always open.
What is open

Will this lock us into another vendor?: No. The router is Apache-2.0 open source, your provider keys stay yours, and the API is OpenAI-compatible, so leaving is a change of base URL.
How much can we save on our LLM bill?: On the public benchmark the router saved 89% against sending everything to the reference model. Import last month's provider bill on the bill page and the estimate is computed on your own traffic before you change a line of code.
How do we compare AI gateways and routers?: The compare pages score each product against the same documented capabilities and say when the review was done; the benchmark page shows measured cost and quality, including the cases the router lost.

Model

Released

Context

Input / 1M

Output / 1M

Intelligence

Capabilities

Mercury 3inception/mercury-3

Oct 16, 2026

$0.10

$0.35

reasoning tools

Mercury 2.5inception/mercury-2.5

Sep 8, 2026

260K

$0.04

$0.15

reasoning tools

Mercury 2inception/mercury-2

Mar 4, 2026

128K

$0.25

$0.75

reasoning tools

Frequently asked

What is the cheapest Inception model?

Mercury 2.5 at $0.04 per 1M input tokens and $0.15 per 1M output tokens (vendor list price).

Which Inception model has the largest context window?

Mercury 3 accepts 1M tokens of context.

How do I route to Inception models with OpenSmartRoute?

Declare a target in targets.yaml with metadata.model set to the catalogue id (for example inception/mercury-3); the router scores it against every other target on cost, quality, latency and your policies for each request.

Inception answers when it is the best answer for the request - and only then.

Inception models

Every Inception model

Frequently asked

Route Inception with everything else

Inception answers when it is the best answer for the request - and only then.

What it does for the vendor strategy.

No vendor lock-in

Lower cost per request

Open source, Apache-2.0

Inception models

Every Inception model

Frequently asked

Route Inception with everything else

Inception answers when it is the best answer for the request - and only then.

What it does for the vendor strategy.

No vendor lock-in

Lower cost per request

Open source, Apache-2.0