InceptionMercury 3
Mercury 3 is an Inception proprietary reasoning model, released 19 Oct 2026. It is not yet ranked: no independent benchmark results so far, only pricing and metadata. At $0.163 per million tokens blended it is among the cheapest fifth of ranked models. Output speed of 238 tokens per second puts it in the fastest quarter, with a first token in 1.1 s.
- Blended price
- $0.163/M
- $0.100 in · $0.350 out
- Output speed
- 238 tok/s
- OpenRouter traffic, 7-day median; not yet measured by Artificial Analysis
- First answer
- 1.08 s
- Context
- 1M
- Full answer
- –
- Cost per run
- –
- Released
- 19 Oct 2026
Versions
Inception has shipped 3 models under this name. Each is ranked on its own results; a newer version often has fewer results so far, which holds its index nearer the average until more arrive.
| Model | Released | Index | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| NewMercury 3this page | 19 Oct 2026 | – | – |
| Mercury 2.5 | 8 Sept 2026 | 45.3 | #512 |
| Mercury 2 | 20 Feb 2026 | 47.0 | #459 |
No independent quality benchmark results yet — only pricing and metadata.
Where to run it
Every provider serving this model through OpenRouter, with throughput and first-token latency measured on live traffic over the last 30 minutes and each provider’s own price. Purple marks the best in each column.
| Provider | Speed | First token | Input $/M | Output $/M | Context | Quantisation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inception | 246 tok/s | 1.08 s | $0.100 | $0.350 | 1M | – |
What a task costs
Estimates from list price, output speed and time to first answer for the best configuration. “With caching” assumes three-quarters of the input is served from the prompt cache at $0.010 per 1M. Reasoning tokens are not modelled.
| Workload | Tokens in / out | Cost | With caching | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat reply | 400 / 300 | $0.0001 | $0.0001 | 2.3 s |
| Summarize a 30-page report | 12,000 / 600 | $0.0014 | $0.0006 | 3.6 s |
| Code edit | 6,000 / 1,500 | $0.0011 | $0.0007 | 7.4 s |
| Agentic coding session | 60,000 / 4,000 | $0.0074 | $0.0034 | 17.9 s |
| Structured extraction | 2,000 / 200 | $0.0003 | $0.0001 | 1.9 s |
More from Inception
See also
Data as of 21 Oct 2026. Compare with another model.
Cite as: BenchLeader, “Mercury 3: benchmarks, pricing, speed and rank”, https://www.benchleader.com/models/mercury-3, data as of 21 Oct 2026.