Gemini 3.5 Transcribe vs Mercury 3
Comparing Gemini 3.5 Transcribe and Mercury 3 across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
Google · Inception · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe and Mercury 3 trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.
On price, Mercury 3 is roughly 27.7x 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 Transcribe
- you want predictable pricing at $2.00/M input and $12.00/M output
Choose Mercury 3
- cost matters — it's about 27.7x cheaper per token
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Individual benchmarks
1 reported for Gemini 3.5 Transcribe · 12 for Mercury 3
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe 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
For input processing, Gemini 3.5 Transcribe ($2.00/1M tokens) is 20.0x more expensive than Mercury 3 ($0.10/1M tokens).
For output processing, Gemini 3.5 Transcribe ($12.00/1M tokens) is 34.3x more expensive than Mercury 3 ($0.35/1M tokens).
In conclusion, Gemini 3.5 Transcribe is more expensive than Mercury 3.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
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).
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe
Mercury 3
License
Usage and distribution terms
Both models are licensed under proprietary licenses.
Both models have usage restrictions defined by their respective organizations.
Proprietary
Closed source
Proprietary
Closed source
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe was released on 2026-08-26, while Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19.
Mercury 3 is 2 months newer than Gemini 3.5 Transcribe.
Aug 26, 2026
1 months ago
Oct 19, 2026
3 days ago
1mo newerKnowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Provider Availability
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe is available from Google. Mercury 3 is available from Inception.
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe
Mercury 3
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Gemini 3.5 Transcribe and Mercury 3 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Gemini 3.5 Transcribe vs Mercury 3.