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Mercury 3 vs Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 26.3. Mercury 3 is 7.4x 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 26.3, ranking #98 overall.

On price, Mercury 3 is roughly 7.4x 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
  • cost matters — it's about 7.4x 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 VL 235B A22B Thinking

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Mercury 3
Inception
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
36.1
#98
26.3
#173
Reasoning
34.8
#103
26.5
#168
Agents
19.4
#84
13.0
#117
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.10 / M
$0.45 / M
Output price
$0.35 / M
$3.49 / M
Context window
1,000,000
262,144

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Mercury 3
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking
Long context
23.0#18
12.9#61
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

12 reported for Mercury 3 · 67 for Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking

No common benchmarks found

Mercury 3 and Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinkingdon'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

Mercury 3 costs less

For input processing, Mercury 3 ($0.10/1M tokens) is 4.5x cheaper than Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking ($0.45/1M tokens).

For output processing, Mercury 3 ($0.35/1M tokens) is 10.0x cheaper than Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking ($3.49/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Qwen3 VL 235B A22B 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
Inception
Mercury 3
Input tokens$0.10
Output tokens$0.35
Best providerInception
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking
Input tokens$0.45
Output tokens$3.49
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 VL 235B A22B Thinking's 262,144 tokens. Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking can generate longer responses up to 262,144 tokens, while Mercury 3 is limited to 131,072 tokens.

Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking
Input262,144 tokens
Output262,144 tokens
Sat Oct 24 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Mercury 3

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Mercury 3 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking 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

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking was released on 2025-09-22.

Mercury 3 is 13 months newer than Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking.

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

5 days ago

1.1yr newer
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking

Sep 22, 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.

No cutoff dates available

Provider Availability

Mercury 3 is available from Inception. Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking is available from DeepInfra, Novita.

Mercury 3

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

Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking

deepinfra logo
Deepinfra
Input Price:Input: $0.45/1MOutput Price:Output: $3.49/1M
novita logo
Novita
Input Price:Input: $0.98/1MOutput Price:Output: $3.95/1M
* 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 VL 235B A22B Thinking side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Mercury 3
✓ Preferred
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mercury 3 vs Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking.

Which is better, Mercury 3 or Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to 26.3. Mercury 3 is made by Inception and Qwen3 VL 235B A22B 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 VL 235B A22B Thinking in benchmarks?

Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%. Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking scores ZebraLogic: 97.3%, DocVQAtest: 96.5%, ScreenSpot: 95.4%, CountBench: 93.7%, MMLU-Redux: 93.7%.

Is Mercury 3 cheaper than Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking?

Mercury 3 is 4.5x cheaper for input tokens. Mercury 3 costs $0.10/M input and $0.35/M output via inception. Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking costs $0.45/M input and $3.49/M output via deepinfra.

What are the context window sizes for Mercury 3 and Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking?

Mercury 3 supports 1.0M tokens and Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking supports 262K 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 VL 235B A22B Thinking?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (36.1 vs 26.3), context window (1.0M vs 262K), input pricing ($0.10 vs $0.45/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 Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking?

Mercury 3 is developed by Inception and Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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