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LFM2.5-2.6B vs Mercury 3

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 18.4.

Liquid AI · Inception · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 18.4, ranking #98 overall.

In the 2 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Mercury 3 wins 2; 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 LFM2.5-2.6B

  • 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 and agents — it leads those capability indexes
  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 2 of 2 exact shared results
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

LFM2.5-2.6B
Liquid AI
Mercury 3
Inception
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
18.4
#234
36.1
#98
Reasoning
14.1
#255
34.8
#103
Coding
16.0
#148
21.5
#105
Agents
6.7
#162
19.4
#84
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
0 of 2
2 of 2
Input price
— / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
— / M
$0.35 / M
Context window
—
1,000,000

Individual benchmarks

9 reported for LFM2.5-2.6B · 12 for Mercury 3

2 shared

LFM2.5-2.6B outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Mercury 3 is better at 2 benchmarks (IFBench, Tau3 Banking).

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).

Liquid AI
LFM2.5-2.6B
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

LFM2.5-2.6B is licensed under LFM Open License v1.0, while Mercury 3 uses a proprietary license.

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

LFM2.5-2.6B

LFM Open License v1.0

Open weights

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

LFM2.5-2.6B was released on 2026-08-04, while Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19.

Mercury 3 is 3 months newer than LFM2.5-2.6B.

LFM2.5-2.6B

Aug 4, 2026

2 months ago

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

0 days ago

2mo 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 LFM2.5-2.6B and Mercury 3 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

LFM2.5-2.6B
✓ Preferred
Mercury 3
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about LFM2.5-2.6B vs Mercury 3.

Which is better, LFM2.5-2.6B or Mercury 3?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 18.4. LFM2.5-2.6B is made by Liquid 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 LFM2.5-2.6B compare to Mercury 3 in benchmarks?

LFM2.5-2.6B scores Multi-IF: 80.1%, PinchBench: 68.2%, Claw-Eval: 62.8%, LiveCodeBench v6: 59.4%, IFBench: 59.2%. 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 LFM2.5-2.6B and Mercury 3?

LFM2.5-2.6B 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 LFM2.5-2.6B and Mercury 3?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (18.4 vs 36.1), licensing (LFM Open License v1.0 vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes LFM2.5-2.6B and Mercury 3?

LFM2.5-2.6B is developed by Liquid AI and Mercury 3 is developed by Inception.

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