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Granite 3.3 8B Base vs Mercury 3

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -1.0.

IBM · Inception · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -1.0, ranking #98 overall.

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

Choose Granite 3.3 8B Base

  • 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 want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Granite 3.3 8B Base
IBM
Mercury 3
Inception
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
-1.0
#355
36.1
#98
Reasoning
-1.1
#349
34.8
#103
Coding
10.9
#182
21.5
#105
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
— / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
— / M
$0.35 / M
Context window
—
1,000,000

Individual benchmarks

20 reported for Granite 3.3 8B Base · 12 for Mercury 3

No common benchmarks found

Granite 3.3 8B Base 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

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

IBM
Granite 3.3 8B Base
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Thu Oct 22 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Granite 3.3 8B Base supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.

Granite 3.3 8B Base can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Granite 3.3 8B Base

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Mercury 3

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Granite 3.3 8B Base is licensed under Apache 2.0, while Mercury 3 uses a proprietary license.

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

Granite 3.3 8B Base

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Granite 3.3 8B Base was released on 2025-04-16, while Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19.

Mercury 3 is 18 months newer than Granite 3.3 8B Base.

Granite 3.3 8B Base

Apr 16, 2025

1.5 years ago

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

0 days ago

1.5yr newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Granite 3.3 8B Base has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2024-04-01, while Mercury 3's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Granite 3.3 8B Base's training data extends to 2024-04-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without Mercury 3's cutoff date.

Granite 3.3 8B Base

Apr 2024

Mercury 3

—

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Granite 3.3 8B Base and Mercury 3 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Granite 3.3 8B Base
✓ Preferred
Mercury 3
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Granite 3.3 8B Base vs Mercury 3.

Which is better, Granite 3.3 8B Base or Mercury 3?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -1.0. Granite 3.3 8B Base is made by IBM 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 Granite 3.3 8B Base compare to Mercury 3 in benchmarks?

Granite 3.3 8B Base scores HumanEval: 89.7%, AttaQ: 88.5%, HumanEval+: 86.1%, AIME 2024: 81.2%, HellaSwag: 80.1%. 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 Granite 3.3 8B Base and Mercury 3?

Granite 3.3 8B Base 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 Granite 3.3 8B Base and Mercury 3?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (-1.0 vs 36.1), multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Apache 2.0 vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Granite 3.3 8B Base and Mercury 3?

Granite 3.3 8B Base is developed by IBM and Mercury 3 is developed by Inception.

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