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Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Mercury 3

Gemini 3.5 Flash and Mercury 3 are closely matched at 42.0 and 36.1 on the LLM Stats Score. Mercury 3 is 20.8x cheaper per token.

Google · Inception · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Gemini 3.5 Flash and Mercury 3 are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 42.0 and 36.1.

On price, Mercury 3 is roughly 20.8x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.

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

Choose Gemini 3.5 Flash

  • your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes

Choose Mercury 3

  • cost matters — it's about 20.8x cheaper per token
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Gemini 3.5 Flash
Google
Mercury 3
Inception
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
42.0
#66
36.1
#98
Reasoning
43.2
#53
34.8
#103
Coding
29.5
#62
21.5
#105
Agents
28.3
#58
19.4
#84
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$1.50 / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
$9.00 / M
$0.35 / M
Context window
1,000,000
1,000,000

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Mercury 3
Long context
7.5#97
23.0#18
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

16 reported for Gemini 3.5 Flash · 12 for Mercury 3

No common benchmarks found

Gemini 3.5 Flash 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

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Mercury 3 costs less

For input processing, Gemini 3.5 Flash ($1.50/1M tokens) is 15.0x more expensive than Mercury 3 ($0.10/1M tokens).

For output processing, Gemini 3.5 Flash ($9.00/1M tokens) is 25.7x more expensive than Mercury 3 ($0.35/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Gemini 3.5 Flash is more expensive than Mercury 3.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers
Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com
Google
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Input tokens$1.50
Output tokens$9.00
Best providerDeepinfra
Inception
Mercury 3
Input tokens$0.10
Output tokens$0.35
Best providerInception
Notice missing or incorrect data?

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Both models have the same input context window of 1,000,000 tokens. Gemini 3.5 Flash can generate longer responses up to 1,000,000 tokens, while Mercury 3 is limited to 131,072 tokens.

Google
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output1,000,000 tokens
Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Gemini 3.5 Flash supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.

Gemini 3.5 Flash can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Gemini 3.5 Flash

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Mercury 3

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Both models are licensed under proprietary licenses.

Both models have usage restrictions defined by their respective organizations.

Gemini 3.5 Flash

Proprietary

Closed source

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Gemini 3.5 Flash was released on 2026-05-19, while Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19.

Mercury 3 is 5 months newer than Gemini 3.5 Flash.

Gemini 3.5 Flash

May 19, 2026

5 months ago

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

3 days ago

5mo newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Gemini 3.5 Flash has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2026-01-31, while Mercury 3's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Gemini 3.5 Flash's training data extends to 2026-01-31, but cannot make a direct comparison without Mercury 3's cutoff date.

Gemini 3.5 Flash

Jan 2026

Mercury 3

—

Provider Availability

Gemini 3.5 Flash is available from DeepInfra, Google. Mercury 3 is available from Inception.

Gemini 3.5 Flash

deepinfra logo
Deepinfra
Input Price:Input: $1.50/1MOutput Price:Output: $9.00/1M
google logo
Google
Input Price:Input: $1.50/1MOutput Price:Output: $9.00/1M

Mercury 3

inception logo
Inception
Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.35/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Gemini 3.5 Flash and Mercury 3 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Gemini 3.5 Flash
✓ Preferred
Mercury 3
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Mercury 3.

Which is better, Gemini 3.5 Flash or Mercury 3?

Gemini 3.5 Flash and Mercury 3 are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at 42.0 and 36.1. Gemini 3.5 Flash is made by Google 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 Gemini 3.5 Flash compare to Mercury 3 in benchmarks?

Gemini 3.5 Flash scores CharXiv-R: 84.2%, MCP Atlas: 83.6%, MMMU-Pro: 83.6%, OSWorld-Verified: 78.4%, Terminal-Bench 2.0: 76.2%. Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%.

Is Gemini 3.5 Flash cheaper than Mercury 3?

Mercury 3 is 15.0x cheaper for input tokens. Gemini 3.5 Flash costs $1.50/M input and $9.00/M output via deepinfra. Mercury 3 costs $0.10/M input and $0.35/M output via inception.

What are the context window sizes for Gemini 3.5 Flash and Mercury 3?

Gemini 3.5 Flash supports 1.0M 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 Gemini 3.5 Flash and Mercury 3?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (42.0 vs 36.1), input pricing ($1.50 vs $0.10/M), multimodal support (yes vs no). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Gemini 3.5 Flash and Mercury 3?

Gemini 3.5 Flash is developed by Google and Mercury 3 is developed by Inception.

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