Mercury 3 vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 23.4. Mercury 3 is 3.0x 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 23.4, 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.
On price, Mercury 3 is roughly 3.0x 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 — it leads those capability indexes
- you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 1 of 1 exact shared results
- cost matters — it's about 3.0x 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Individual benchmarks
12 reported for Mercury 3 · 23 for Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Mercury 3 outperforms in 1 benchmarks (GPQA), while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is better at 0 benchmarks.
Mercury 3 significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Pricing Analysis
Price comparison per million tokens
For input processing, Mercury 3 ($0.10/1M tokens) is 1.5x cheaper than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking ($0.15/1M tokens).
For output processing, Mercury 3 ($0.35/1M tokens) is 4.3x cheaper than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking ($1.50/1M tokens).
In conclusion, Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is more expensive than Mercury 3.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Mercury 3 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking's 65,536 tokens. Mercury 3 can generate longer responses up to 131,072 tokens, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is limited to 65,536 tokens.
License
Usage and distribution terms
Mercury 3 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking uses Apache 2.0.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Proprietary
Closed source
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking was released on 2025-09-10.
Mercury 3 is 13 months newer than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.
Oct 19, 2026
0 days ago
1.1yr newerSep 10, 2025
1.1 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Provider Availability
Mercury 3 is available from Inception. Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is available from Novita.
Mercury 3
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Mercury 3 and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Mercury 3 vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.
Related comparisons
More Mercury 3 comparisons
More Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking comparisons
- Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking vs MiniMax M3.1 Flash
- Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking vs DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017
- Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking vs Beam 1.0
- Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking vs Nemotron Labs Dory 1.0 (4B)
- Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking vs Muse Spark Open
- Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking vs Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)