Mercury 3 vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 1.4.
Inception · Microsoft · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 1.4, 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 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
Choose Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Capability indexes
Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks
Individual benchmarks
12 reported for Mercury 3 · 31 for Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct
Mercury 3 outperforms in 1 benchmarks (GPQA), while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct is better at 0 benchmarks.
Mercury 3 significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
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).
License
Usage and distribution terms
Mercury 3 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct uses MIT.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Proprietary
Closed source
MIT
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct was released on 2024-08-23.
Mercury 3 is 26 months newer than Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct.
Oct 19, 2026
1 days ago
2.2yr newerAug 23, 2024
2.2 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Mercury 3 and Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Mercury 3 vs Phi-3.5-MoE-instruct.