Inception · Released Oct 16, 2026Mercury 3
Inception's diffusion reasoning model for chat, multi-step problem solving, and tool use.
- Capability
- —No ECI score yet
- Input
- $0.10per 1M tokens
- Output
- $0.35per 1M tokens
- Context
- 1M131K max output
What it costs
- Input
- $0.10per million tokens
- Output
- $0.35per million tokens
- Cached input
- $0.01per million tokens
- Blended (3:1)
- $0.163cheaper than 81% of priced models
Typical monthly bills
| Monthly usage | Estimated cost |
|---|---|
| Side project2M input + 0.5M output tokens | $0.375 |
| Team assistant25M input + 5M output tokens | $4.25 |
| Production app250M input + 50M output tokens | $42.50 |
Official Inception API price, as listed on models.dev.
Independent benchmarks
Epoch AI has not published a Capabilities Index score for Mercury 3 yet.
The details
- Lab
- Inception
- Released
- Oct 16, 2026
- Context window
- 1,000,000 tokens
- Max output
- 131,072 tokens
- Inputs
- Text
- Output
- Text
- Reasoning
- Adjustable effort low · medium · high
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Structured output
- Yes
- Weights
- Proprietary
- API model ID
mercury-3on Inception- Availability
- 3 API providerslisted on models.dev
More from Inception
About Mercury 3
How much does Mercury 3 cost?
Mercury 3 costs $0.10 input / $0.35 output per million tokens (official Inception API price). Cached input is $0.01 per million tokens. At a 3:1 input-to-output mix that is $0.163 per million tokens, cheaper than 81% of the 445 priced models we track.
What is the context window of Mercury 3?
Mercury 3 accepts up to 1,000,000 tokens per request and can write up to 131,072 tokens in one response.
How good is Mercury 3?
Epoch AI has not published a Capabilities Index score for Mercury 3 yet.
Is Mercury 3 open source?
No. Mercury 3 is proprietary; you use it through Inception’s API or partner platforms.
What inputs does Mercury 3 support?
Mercury 3 accepts text and replies in text. It is a reasoning model with low, medium and high effort settings, supports tool calling and can return structured JSON output.
When was Mercury 3 released?
Inception released Mercury 3 on Oct 16, 2026.
What are the best alternatives to Mercury 3?
The closest current models from other labs on capability, price and release date are MiMo-V2.6-Flash (Xiaomi, $0.14 / $0.28), Solar Mini 4 (Upstage, $0.10 / $0.40), Ornith 1.5 35B A3B (DeepReinforce, $0.10 / $0.40) and Viv Fast (Vivgrid, $0.13 / $0.40).