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Mercury 3 vs Pixtral-12B

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -2.1. Pixtral-12B is 1.1x cheaper per token.

Inception · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -2.1, ranking #98 overall.

On price, Pixtral-12B is roughly 1.1x 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 Pixtral-12B

  • cost matters — it's about 1.1x 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
Pixtral-12B
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
36.1
#98
-2.1
#362
Reasoning
34.8
#103
-4.2
#364
Coding
21.5
#105
-2.7
#275
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.10 / M
$0.15 / M
Output price
$0.35 / M
$0.15 / M
Context window
1,000,000
128,000

Individual benchmarks

12 reported for Mercury 3 · 12 for Pixtral-12B

No common benchmarks found

Mercury 3 and Pixtral-12Bdon'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

Pixtral-12B costs less

For input processing, Mercury 3 ($0.10/1M tokens) is 1.5x cheaper than Pixtral-12B ($0.15/1M tokens).

For output processing, Mercury 3 ($0.35/1M tokens) is 2.3x more expensive than Pixtral-12B ($0.15/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Mercury 3 is more expensive than Pixtral-12B.*

* 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
Pixtral-12B
Input tokens$0.15
Output tokens$0.15
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 Pixtral-12B's 128,000 tokens. Mercury 3 can generate longer responses up to 131,072 tokens, while Pixtral-12B is limited to 8,192 tokens.

Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Mistral AI
Pixtral-12B
Input128,000 tokens
Output8,192 tokens
Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Pixtral-12B supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.

Pixtral-12B can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Mercury 3

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Pixtral-12B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Mercury 3 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Pixtral-12B uses Apache 2.0.

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

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Pixtral-12B

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while Pixtral-12B was released on 2024-09-17.

Mercury 3 is 25 months newer than Pixtral-12B.

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

1 days ago

2.1yr newer
Pixtral-12B

Sep 17, 2024

2.1 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. Pixtral-12B is available from Mistral AI.

Mercury 3

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

Pixtral-12B

mistral logo
Mistral
Input Price:Input: $0.15/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.15/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Mercury 3 and Pixtral-12B side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Mercury 3
✓ Preferred
Pixtral-12B
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mercury 3 vs Pixtral-12B.

Which is better, Mercury 3 or Pixtral-12B?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -2.1. Mercury 3 is made by Inception and Pixtral-12B 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 Pixtral-12B in benchmarks?

Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%. Pixtral-12B scores DocVQA: 90.7%, ChartQA: 81.8%, VQAv2: 78.6%, MT-Bench: 76.8%, HumanEval: 72.0%.

Is Mercury 3 cheaper than Pixtral-12B?

Mercury 3 is 1.5x cheaper for input tokens. Mercury 3 costs $0.10/M input and $0.35/M output via inception. Pixtral-12B costs $0.15/M input and $0.15/M output via mistral.

What are the context window sizes for Mercury 3 and Pixtral-12B?

Mercury 3 supports 1.0M tokens and Pixtral-12B 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 Pixtral-12B?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (36.1 vs -2.1), context window (1.0M vs 128K), input pricing ($0.10 vs $0.15/M), multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (Proprietary vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Mercury 3 and Pixtral-12B?

Mercury 3 is developed by Inception and Pixtral-12B is developed by Mistral AI.

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