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Mercury 3 vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next leads the LLM Stats Score 48.1 to 36.1.

Inception · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next leads the overall LLM Stats Score 48.1 to 36.1, ranking #31 overall.

In the 2 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Qwen3.8-Flash-Next wins 2; 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

  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026

Choose Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

  • overall performance matters — it scores 48.1 and ranks #31 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning and agents — it leads those capability indexes
  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 2 of 2 exact shared results
  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Mercury 3
Inception
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
36.1
#98
48.1
#31
Reasoning
34.8
#103
48.5
#20
Coding
21.5
#105
33.2
#42
Agents
19.4
#84
32.8
#35
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
0 of 2
2 of 2
Input price
$0.10 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.35 / M
— / M
Context window
1,000,000
—

Individual benchmarks

12 reported for Mercury 3 · 22 for Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

2 shared

Mercury 3 outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is better at 2 benchmarks (GPQA, IFBench).

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com

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).

Inception
Mercury 3
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Fri Oct 23 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Mercury 3

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Mercury 3 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Qwen3.8-Flash-Next uses Qwen Community License 1.0.

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

Mercury 3

Proprietary

Closed source

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

Qwen Community License 1.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while Qwen3.8-Flash-Next was released on 2026-08-26.

Mercury 3 is 2 months newer than Qwen3.8-Flash-Next.

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

1 days ago

1mo newer
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next

Aug 26, 2026

1 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

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Mercury 3 and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Mercury 3
✓ Preferred
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mercury 3 vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next.

Which is better, Mercury 3 or Qwen3.8-Flash-Next?

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next leads the LLM Stats Score 48.1 to 36.1. Mercury 3 is made by Inception and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 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 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next in benchmarks?

Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%. Qwen3.8-Flash-Next scores MathVision: 95.7%, LiveCodeBench v6: 91.9%, GPQA: 91.7%, CharXiv-R: 90.6%, RealWorldQA: 88.5%.

What are the context window sizes for Mercury 3 and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next?

Mercury 3 supports 1.0M tokens and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next supports an unknown number of 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 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (36.1 vs 48.1), multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (Proprietary vs Qwen Community License 1.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Mercury 3 and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next?

Mercury 3 is developed by Inception and Qwen3.8-Flash-Next is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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