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Mercury 3 vs Ministral 8B Instruct

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -5.1. Ministral 8B Instruct is 1.6x cheaper per token.

Inception · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -5.1, ranking #98 overall.

On price, Ministral 8B Instruct is roughly 1.6x 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 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 process long inputs — it offers a 1,000,000 token context window
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

Choose Ministral 8B Instruct

  • cost matters — it's about 1.6x cheaper per token
  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Mercury 3
Inception
Ministral 8B Instruct
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
36.1
#98
-5.1
#378
Reasoning
34.8
#103
-5.2
#369
Coding
21.5
#105
-14.5
#292
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.10 / M
$0.10 / M
Output price
$0.35 / M
$0.10 / M
Context window
1,000,000
128,000

Individual benchmarks

12 reported for Mercury 3 · 11 for Ministral 8B Instruct

No common benchmarks found

Mercury 3 and Ministral 8B Instructdon'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

Ministral 8B Instruct costs less

For input processing, Mercury 3 ($0.10/1M tokens) costs the same as Ministral 8B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens).

For output processing, Mercury 3 ($0.35/1M tokens) is 3.5x more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Mercury 3 is more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct.*

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

Lowest available price from all providers
Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com
Inception
Mercury 3
Input tokens$0.10
Output tokens$0.35
Best providerInception
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input tokens$0.10
Output tokens$0.10
Best providerMistral
Notice missing or incorrect data?

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Mercury 3 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Ministral 8B Instruct's 128,000 tokens. Mercury 3 can generate longer responses up to 131,072 tokens, while Ministral 8B Instruct is limited to 128,000 tokens.

Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input128,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

Mercury 3 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Ministral 8B Instruct uses Mistral Research License.

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

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Ministral 8B Instruct

Mistral Research License

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while Ministral 8B Instruct was released on 2024-10-16.

Mercury 3 is 24 months newer than Ministral 8B Instruct.

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

0 days ago

2.0yr newer
Ministral 8B Instruct

Oct 16, 2024

2.0 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

Provider Availability

Mercury 3 is available from Inception. Ministral 8B Instruct is available from Mistral AI.

Mercury 3

inception logo
Inception
Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.35/1M

Ministral 8B Instruct

mistral logo
Mistral
Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.10/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

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

Mercury 3
✓ Preferred
Ministral 8B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mercury 3 vs Ministral 8B Instruct.

Which is better, Mercury 3 or Ministral 8B Instruct?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -5.1. Mercury 3 is made by Inception and Ministral 8B Instruct is made by Mistral AI. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Mercury 3 compare to Ministral 8B Instruct in benchmarks?

Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%. Ministral 8B Instruct scores MT-Bench: 83.0%, Winogrande: 75.3%, ARC-C: 71.9%, Arena Hard: 70.9%, MBPP pass@1: 70.0%.

Is Mercury 3 cheaper than Ministral 8B Instruct?

Both models cost $0.10 per million input tokens.

What are the context window sizes for Mercury 3 and Ministral 8B Instruct?

Mercury 3 supports 1.0M tokens and Ministral 8B Instruct supports 128K 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 Ministral 8B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (36.1 vs -5.1), context window (1.0M vs 128K), licensing (Proprietary vs Mistral Research License). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Mercury 3 and Ministral 8B Instruct?

Mercury 3 is developed by Inception and Ministral 8B Instruct is developed by Mistral AI.

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