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Grok-2 mini vs Mercury 3

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 8.1.

xAI · Inception · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 8.1, ranking #98 overall.

In the 1 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Mercury 3 wins 1; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

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

Choose Grok-2 mini

  • you are already invested in the xAI ecosystem

Choose Mercury 3

  • overall performance matters — it scores 36.1 and ranks #98 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 1 of 1 exact shared results
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Grok-2 mini
xAI
Mercury 3
Inception
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
8.1
#303
36.1
#98
Reasoning
7.7
#304
34.8
#103
Coding
5.8
#216
21.5
#105
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
0 of 1
1 of 1
Input price
— / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
— / M
$0.35 / M
Context window
—
1,000,000

Individual benchmarks

8 reported for Grok-2 mini · 12 for Mercury 3

1 shared

Grok-2 mini outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Mercury 3 is better at 1 benchmark (GPQA).

Mercury 3 significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com

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).

xAI
Grok-2 mini
Input- tokens
Output- 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

Grok-2 mini supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.

Grok-2 mini can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Grok-2 mini

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.

Grok-2 mini

Proprietary

Closed source

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Grok-2 mini was released on 2024-08-13, while Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19.

Mercury 3 is 27 months newer than Grok-2 mini.

Grok-2 mini

Aug 13, 2024

2.2 years ago

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

0 days ago

2.2yr 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

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Grok-2 mini and Mercury 3 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Grok-2 mini
✓ Preferred
Mercury 3
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Grok-2 mini vs Mercury 3.

Which is better, Grok-2 mini or Mercury 3?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 8.1. Grok-2 mini is made by xAI 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 Grok-2 mini compare to Mercury 3 in benchmarks?

Grok-2 mini scores DocVQA: 93.2%, MMLU: 86.2%, HumanEval: 85.7%, MATH: 73.0%, MMLU-Pro: 72.0%. 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 Grok-2 mini and Mercury 3?

Grok-2 mini 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 Grok-2 mini and Mercury 3?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (8.1 vs 36.1), multimodal support (yes vs no). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Grok-2 mini and Mercury 3?

Grok-2 mini is developed by xAI and Mercury 3 is developed by Inception.

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