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DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs Mercury 3

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -3.5.

DeepSeek · Inception · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -3.5, ranking #98 overall.

In the 1 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Mercury 3 wins 1; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

Choose Mercury 3

  • overall performance matters — it scores 36.1 and ranks #98 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 1 of 1 exact shared results
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
DeepSeek
Mercury 3
Inception
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
-3.5
#368
36.1
#98
Reasoning
-3.1
#359
34.8
#103
Coding
-4.7
#284
21.5
#105
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
0 of 1
1 of 1
Input price
— / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
— / M
$0.35 / M
Context window
—
1,000,000

Individual benchmarks

4 reported for DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B · 12 for Mercury 3

1 shared

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Mercury 3 is better at 1 benchmark (GPQA).

Mercury 3 significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Thu Oct 22 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Mercury 3 specifies input context (1,000,000 tokens). Only Mercury 3 specifies output context (131,072 tokens).

DeepSeek
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Thu Oct 22 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is licensed under MIT, while Mercury 3 uses a proprietary license.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

MIT

Open weights

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B was released on 2025-01-20, while Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19.

Mercury 3 is 21 months newer than DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Jan 20, 2025

1.7 years ago

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

1 days ago

1.7yr newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mercury 3 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
✓ Preferred
Mercury 3
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs Mercury 3.

Which is better, DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B or Mercury 3?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -3.5. DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is made by DeepSeek and Mercury 3 is made by Inception. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B compare to Mercury 3 in benchmarks?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B scores MATH-500: 83.9%, AIME 2024: 52.7%, GPQA: 33.8%, LiveCodeBench: 16.9%. Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%.

What are the context window sizes for DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mercury 3?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B supports an unknown number of tokens and Mercury 3 supports 1.0M tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mercury 3?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (-3.5 vs 36.1), licensing (MIT vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mercury 3?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is developed by DeepSeek and Mercury 3 is developed by Inception.

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