The AI arena is free today

Open Superagent

GLM-5 vs Mercury 3

GLM-5 and Mercury 3 are closely matched at 36.8 and 36.1 on the LLM Stats Score. Mercury 3 is 9.5x cheaper per token.

Zhipu AI · Inception · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

GLM-5 and Mercury 3 are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 36.8 and 36.1.

On price, Mercury 3 is roughly 9.5x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.

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 GLM-5

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

Choose Mercury 3

  • cost matters — it's about 9.5x cheaper per token
  • 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.

GLM-5
Zhipu AI
Mercury 3
Inception
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
36.8
#89
36.1
#98
Reasoning
37.2
#86
34.8
#103
Coding
25.6
#84
21.5
#105
Agents
19.4
#85
19.4
#84
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$1.00 / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
$3.20 / M
$0.35 / M
Context window
200,000
1,000,000

Individual benchmarks

5 reported for GLM-5 · 12 for Mercury 3

No common benchmarks found

GLM-5 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, GLM-5 ($1.00/1M tokens) is 10.0x more expensive than Mercury 3 ($0.10/1M tokens).

For output processing, GLM-5 ($3.20/1M tokens) is 9.1x more expensive than Mercury 3 ($0.35/1M tokens).

In conclusion, GLM-5 is more expensive than Mercury 3.*

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

Lowest available price from all providers
Sat Oct 24 2026 • llm-stats.com
Zhipu AI
GLM-5
Input tokens$1.00
Output tokens$3.20
Best providerFriendliAI
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

Mercury 3 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to GLM-5's 200,000 tokens. Mercury 3 can generate longer responses up to 131,072 tokens, while GLM-5 is limited to 128,000 tokens.

Zhipu AI
GLM-5
Input200,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Sat Oct 24 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

GLM-5 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.

GLM-5

MIT

Open weights

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

GLM-5 was released on 2026-02-11, while Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19.

Mercury 3 is 8 months newer than GLM-5.

GLM-5

Feb 11, 2026

8 months ago

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

0 days ago

8mo 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

Provider Availability

GLM-5 is available from FriendliAI, ZAI. Mercury 3 is available from Inception.

GLM-5

friendli logo
FriendliAI
Input Price:Input: $1.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $3.20/1M
z logo
Unknown Organization
Input Price:Input: $1.00/1MOutput Price:Output: $3.20/1M

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 GLM-5 and Mercury 3 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

GLM-5
✓ Preferred
Mercury 3
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about GLM-5 vs Mercury 3.

Which is better, GLM-5 or Mercury 3?

GLM-5 and Mercury 3 are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at 36.8 and 36.1. GLM-5 is made by Zhipu AI 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 GLM-5 compare to Mercury 3 in benchmarks?

GLM-5 scores t2-bench: 89.7%, SWE-Bench Verified: 77.8%, BrowseComp: 75.9%, MCP Atlas: 67.8%, Terminal-Bench 2.0: 56.2%. Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%.

Is GLM-5 cheaper than Mercury 3?

Mercury 3 is 10.0x cheaper for input tokens. GLM-5 costs $1.00/M input and $3.20/M output via friendli. Mercury 3 costs $0.10/M input and $0.35/M output via inception.

What are the context window sizes for GLM-5 and Mercury 3?

GLM-5 supports 200K 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 GLM-5 and Mercury 3?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (36.8 vs 36.1), context window (200K vs 1.0M), input pricing ($1.00 vs $0.10/M), licensing (MIT vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes GLM-5 and Mercury 3?

GLM-5 is developed by Zhipu AI and Mercury 3 is developed by Inception.

Related comparisons