DeepSeek VL2 vs Mercury 3
Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 2.5.
DeepSeek · Inception · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 2.5, ranking #98 overall.
Mercury 3 also accepts a larger context window (1,000,000 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.
Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose DeepSeek VL2
- 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 — it leads those capability indexes
- you process long inputs — it offers a 1,000,000 token context window
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Individual benchmarks
14 reported for DeepSeek VL2 · 12 for Mercury 3
DeepSeek VL2 and Mercury 3don't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Mercury 3 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to DeepSeek VL2's 129,280 tokens. Mercury 3 can generate longer responses up to 131,072 tokens, while DeepSeek VL2 is limited to 129,280 tokens.
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
DeepSeek VL2 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.
DeepSeek VL2 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
DeepSeek VL2
Mercury 3
License
Usage and distribution terms
DeepSeek VL2 is licensed under deepseek, while Mercury 3 uses a proprietary license.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
deepseek
Open weights
Proprietary
Closed source
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
DeepSeek VL2 was released on 2024-12-13, while Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19.
Mercury 3 is 23 months newer than DeepSeek VL2.
Dec 13, 2024
1.9 years ago
Oct 19, 2026
3 days ago
1.8yr newerKnowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Provider Availability
DeepSeek VL2 is available from Replicate. Mercury 3 is available from Inception.
DeepSeek VL2
Mercury 3
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against DeepSeek VL2 and Mercury 3 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about DeepSeek VL2 vs Mercury 3.