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Mercury 3 vs MiniMax M1 40K

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 20.0.

Inception · MiniMax · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 20.0, 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 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 2 of 2 exact shared results
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

Choose MiniMax M1 40K

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

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Mercury 3
Inception
MiniMax M1 40K
MiniMax
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
36.1
#98
20.0
#220
Reasoning
34.8
#103
20.2
#210
Coding
21.5
#105
7.7
#205
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
2 of 2
0 of 2
Input price
$0.10 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.35 / M
— / M
Context window
1,000,000
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Mercury 3
MiniMax M1 40K
Long context
23.0#18
22.5#19
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

12 reported for Mercury 3 · 16 for MiniMax M1 40K

2 shared

Mercury 3 outperforms in 2 benchmarks (GPQA, Multi-Challenge), while MiniMax M1 40K is better at 0 benchmarks.

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).

Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
MiniMax
MiniMax M1 40K
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

Mercury 3 is licensed under a proprietary license, while MiniMax M1 40K uses MIT.

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

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

MiniMax M1 40K

MIT

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while MiniMax M1 40K was released on 2025-06-16.

Mercury 3 is 16 months newer than MiniMax M1 40K.

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

3 days ago

1.3yr newer
MiniMax M1 40K

Jun 16, 2025

1.4 years ago

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 Mercury 3 and MiniMax M1 40K side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Mercury 3
✓ Preferred
MiniMax M1 40K
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mercury 3 vs MiniMax M1 40K.

Which is better, Mercury 3 or MiniMax M1 40K?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 20.0. Mercury 3 is made by Inception and MiniMax M1 40K is made by MiniMax. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Mercury 3 compare to MiniMax M1 40K in benchmarks?

Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%. MiniMax M1 40K scores MATH-500: 96.0%, AIME 2024: 83.3%, MMLU-Pro: 80.6%, ZebraLogic: 80.1%, OpenAI-MRCR: 2 needle 128k: 76.1%.

What are the context window sizes for Mercury 3 and MiniMax M1 40K?

Mercury 3 supports 1.0M tokens and MiniMax M1 40K supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Mercury 3 and MiniMax M1 40K?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (36.1 vs 20.0), licensing (Proprietary vs MIT). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Mercury 3 and MiniMax M1 40K?

Mercury 3 is developed by Inception and MiniMax M1 40K is developed by MiniMax.

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