// pricing · October 2026
Inception API Pricing
Every Inception model's list price per 1M tokens — input, output and cached input — with context windows, LiveBench scores and what a real workload costs per month.
3 Inception models are listed, with a median list price of $0.100 per 1M input tokens and $0.350 per 1M output tokens. Paid prices run from $0.068 (Mercury 2.5) to $0.375 (Mercury 2) per 1M tokens blended.
- Models
- 3
- Median input / 1M
- $0.100
- paid models
- Median output / 1M
- $0.350
- paid models
- Cheapest paid
- $0.068
- Mercury 2.5
- Prompt caching
- 3
- publish a cached-input price
Inception model prices
List prices in USD per 1M tokens. “Blended” is a 3:1 input:output mix; the per-month column prices the selected workload using each model's cached-input rate where it publishes one.
Showing 3 of 3 models · per-month column: 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests, 50% of input cached
| inception/mercury-2.5 | $0.040 | $0.150 | $0.0040 | $0.068 | 260K | — | $26.60 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mercury 3New inception/mercury-3 | $0.100 | $0.350 | $0.010 | $0.162 | 1M | — | $65.00 |
| inception/mercury-2 | $0.250 | $0.750 | $0.025 | $0.375 | 128K | — | $155.00 |
Inception pricing FAQ
What is the cheapest Inception model?
Mercury 2.5 is the cheapest paid Inception model, at $0.040 per 1M input tokens and $0.150 per 1M output tokens.
Why do output tokens cost more than input tokens?
Generating a token takes a full forward pass per token, while input is processed in parallel. Across the paid Inception models listed here the median output price is $0.350 per 1M against $0.100 for input — reasoning tokens bill as output too.
Which Inception models support prompt caching?
3 of 3 publish a separate cached-input price, which bills repeated prompt prefixes at a fraction of the normal input rate. Filter the table by "Caching" to see them.
How current are these prices?
List prices are pulled from OpenRouter’s public models API and refreshed every 15 minutes. Batch discounts and enterprise pricing are not included.
Other providers
What these prices include
- List prices from OpenRouter's public models API, which mirrors provider pricing. Batch discounts and negotiated enterprise rates are not included.
- Variants —
:freeand:batchlistings are folded into their base model; its model page lists them. - Per-month cost is a floor: tokens you describe times list price. Cache writes and reasoning-token volume depend on your workload.