Mercury 3 vs Qwen3 Max Thinking

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 32.6. Mercury 3 is 14.8x cheaper per token.

Inception · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 32.6, ranking #98 overall.

In the 4 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Mercury 3 wins 3; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

On price, Mercury 3 is roughly 14.8x 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 agents — it leads those capability indexes
you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 3 of 4 exact shared results
cost matters — it's about 14.8x cheaper per token
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 Qwen3 Max Thinking

you want predictable pricing at $1.20/M input and $6.00/M output

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Better token value: Mercury 3

Mercury 3

Inception

Qwen3 Max Thinking

Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team

Core performance indexes

LLM Stats Score

36.1

#98 · 10 evals

Best

32.6

#125 · 33 evals

Reasoning

34.8

#103 · 8 evals

Best

33.7

#113 · 26 evals

Coding

21.5

#105 · 1 evals

Best

16.0

#147 · 3 evals

Agents

19.4

#84 · 4 evals

Best

9.9

#142 · 8 evals

Cost, coverage & limits

Benchmark wins

3 of 4

Best

1 of 4

Input price

$0.10 / M

Best

$1.20 / M

Output price

$0.35 / M

Best

$6.00 / M

Context window

1,000,000

Best

256,000

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared

Index

Mercury 3

Qwen3 Max Thinking

Long context

23.0#18 · 2 evals

19.7#33 · 2 evals

Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

12 reported for Mercury 3 · 34 for Qwen3 Max Thinking

4 shared

Mercury 3 outperforms in 3 benchmarks (AA-LCR, GPQA, IFBench), while Qwen3 Max Thinking is better at 1 benchmark (Multi-Challenge).

Mercury 3 shows notably better performance in the majority of benchmarks.

Sat Oct 24 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Mercury 3 costs less

For input processing, Mercury 3 ($0.10/1M tokens) is 12.0x cheaper than Qwen3 Max Thinking ($1.20/1M tokens).

For output processing, Mercury 3 ($0.35/1M tokens) is 17.1x cheaper than Qwen3 Max Thinking ($6.00/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Qwen3 Max Thinking is more expensive than Mercury 3.*

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

Lowest available price from all providers

Sat Oct 24 2026 • llm-stats.com

Mercury 3

Input tokens$0.10

Output tokens$0.35

Best providerInception

Qwen3 Max Thinking

Input tokens$1.20

Output tokens$6.00

Best providerDeepinfra

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Mercury 3 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Qwen3 Max Thinking's 256,000 tokens. Qwen3 Max Thinking can generate longer responses up to 256,000 tokens, while Mercury 3 is limited to 131,072 tokens.

Mercury 3

Input1,000,000 tokens

Output131,072 tokens

Qwen3 Max Thinking

Input256,000 tokens

Output256,000 tokens

Sat Oct 24 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

Both models are licensed under proprietary licenses.

Both models have usage restrictions defined by their respective organizations.

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Qwen3 Max Thinking

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while Qwen3 Max Thinking was released on 2026-02-13.

Mercury 3 is 8 months newer than Qwen3 Max Thinking.

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

1 days ago

8mo newer

Qwen3 Max Thinking

Feb 13, 2026

8 months 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. Qwen3 Max Thinking is available from DeepInfra.

Mercury 3

Inception

Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.35/1M

Qwen3 Max Thinking

Deepinfra

Input Price:Input: $1.20/1MOutput Price:Output: $6.00/1M

* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Mercury 3 and Qwen3 Max Thinking side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Mercury 3

✓ Preferred

Qwen3 Max Thinking

Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mercury 3 vs Qwen3 Max Thinking.

Which is better, Mercury 3 or Qwen3 Max Thinking?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 32.6. Mercury 3 is made by Inception and Qwen3 Max Thinking is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Mercury 3 compare to Qwen3 Max Thinking in benchmarks?

Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%. Qwen3 Max Thinking scores C-Eval: 93.7%, IFEval: 93.4%, AIME 2026: 93.3%, MMLU-Redux: 92.8%, GPQA: 87.4%.

Is Mercury 3 cheaper than Qwen3 Max Thinking?

Mercury 3 is 12.0x cheaper for input tokens. Mercury 3 costs $0.10/M input and $0.35/M output via inception. Qwen3 Max Thinking costs $1.20/M input and $6.00/M output via deepinfra.

What are the context window sizes for Mercury 3 and Qwen3 Max Thinking?

Mercury 3 supports 1.0M tokens and Qwen3 Max Thinking supports 256K 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 Qwen3 Max Thinking?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (36.1 vs 32.6), context window (1.0M vs 256K), input pricing ($0.10 vs $1.20/M). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Mercury 3 and Qwen3 Max Thinking?

Mercury 3 is developed by Inception and Qwen3 Max Thinking is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

Mercury 3 vs Qwen3 Max Thinking