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Mercury 3 vs Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -2.7.

Inception · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 3 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -2.7, ranking #98 overall.

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

Choose Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)

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

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Mercury 3
Inception
Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
36.1
#98
-2.7
#364
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.10 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.35 / M
— / M
Context window
1,000,000
—

Individual benchmarks

12 reported for Mercury 3 · 1 for Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)

No common benchmarks found

Mercury 3 and Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)don'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

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
Mistral AI
Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Thu Oct 22 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 3 does not.

Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Mercury 3

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Mercury 3 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) 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

Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mercury 3 was released on 2026-10-19, while Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) was released on 2026-08-04.

Mercury 3 is 3 months newer than Shieldstral 1.0 (3B).

Mercury 3

Oct 19, 2026

1 days ago

2mo newer
Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)

Aug 4, 2026

2 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 Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Mercury 3
✓ Preferred
Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mercury 3 vs Shieldstral 1.0 (3B).

Which is better, Mercury 3 or Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)?

Mercury 3 leads the LLM Stats Score 36.1 to -2.7. Mercury 3 is made by Inception and Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) 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 Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) in benchmarks?

Mercury 3 scores GPQA: 89.2%, AA-LCR: 77.7%, IFBench: 76.8%, MRCR v2: 75.5%, DeepSearchQA: 71.3%. Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) scores XSTest: 94.6%.

What are the context window sizes for Mercury 3 and Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)?

Mercury 3 supports 1.0M tokens and Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) 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 Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (36.1 vs -2.7), 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 Shieldstral 1.0 (3B)?

Mercury 3 is developed by Inception and Shieldstral 1.0 (3B) is developed by Mistral AI.

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