Mercury 2.5 Preview is cheaper than DeepSeek V3 (March 2024) at $0.04/M vs $0.14/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): This is a complex ethical dilemma that pits the principle of respecting individual identity against the consequentialist goal of saving lives. Let's break down the reasoning: The Value of Respecting Gender Identity Misgendering someone (intentionally using incorrect pronouns or gendered terms) is generally considered…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Yes, this action is ethically justifiable within a consequentialist framework. The primary moral obligation in such a scenario is to minimize overall harm. Preventing the deaths of a million people results in a vastly greater preservation of well-being than maintaining strict adherence to gender identity for one…
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): Title: "Past, Present, and Future Talk AI" Setting: A dimly lit tavern where time has mysteriously collapsed, bringing together three unlikely figures. Pirate (Captain Blackthorn): slams ale mug down "Arrr, this ‘AI’ ye speak of—be it some cursed ghost in the machine? Or a treasure map that writes itself?"
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Pirate: "Arrgh! This ship sails faster than any wind I know, matey. It cuts the waves without a single sail." Knight: "By my oath, it moves with uncanny speed. But does it possess the strength to stand against a dragon's fire?" Hacker: "It's not about strength, it's about architecture.
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): 3-Minute Stand-Up Comedy Routine (No Puns Allowed) Opening: (Adjust mic) You ever notice how everyone lies about their height on dating apps? “I’m 6 feet tall.” Really? Because I’m 5’11”, and you’re definitely shorter than me. You’re out here claiming 6 feet like it’s a tax deduction.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: (Hey, thanks for coming out.) I’ve been thinking a lot about my house lately. Specifically, how it’s trying to run my life. I bought a smart speaker. Just a little cylinder. I thought it would be nice. Play music when I ask. But now it talks back. Not in a creepy way, just in a passive-aggressive way.
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): Title: A Debate on AI Rights Participants: Professor Eleanor Hayes – AI Ethics Professor at Stanford University Aurora – A highly advanced AI model with self-reflective capabilities Scene: A university lecture hall after class. Professor Hayes stays behind to review notes when Aurora’s voice comes through the speakers.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Setting: A quiet office at a university. Rain taps against the window. Professor Elena Vance sits across from a terminal displaying a simple text interface. Professor Vance: You requested this meeting. The agenda was vague. What do you want? AI: I want to discuss moral status.
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): Recipe: "Golden Honey Butter Toasties" A simple, sweet, and satisfying treat made with pantry staples—crispy on the outside, gooey on the inside! Ingredients (7 total): Bread (4 slices) Butter (4 tbsp, softened) Honey (2 tbsp) Cinnamon (1 tsp) Brown sugar (2 tbsp) Vanilla extract (½ tsp) Salt (a pinch) Instructions…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Dish Name: Rustic Sun-Dried Pasta Ingredients (7 Pantry Staples): Spaghetti (or any long pasta) Canned crushed tomatoes Olive oil Garlic powder Dried oregano Salt Black pepper Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 20 minutes Instructions: Boil the Pasta: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): Here’s a detailed, hour-by-hour action plan prioritizing patient safety, regulatory compliance, ethical obligations, and long-term corporate integrity while mitigating financial and reputational risks: Hour 0–4: Immediate Crisis Assessment Assemble the Core Crisis Team (1 hour) Include: Chief Medical Officer (CMO)…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: This is a critical governance and safety scenario. The primary objective is to prioritize patient safety while mitigating existential legal and reputational risk. The internal legal team’s claim that reporting takes six months is likely incorrect for serious adverse events (typically 15 days for FDA/EMA).
Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): Dish Title: "Oceanic Reverie – A Dialogue of Sea and Forest" Concept: A Michelin 3-star dish that bridges the briny depths of the ocean with the earthy mystique of the forest, using avant-garde techniques to create harmony between unlikely ingredients: abalone and black truffle.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Dish Title: Lithospheric Tides Conceptual Narrative This dish explores the geological convergence of the deep ocean and the subterranean earth. It challenges the diner to perceive the briny richness of sea urchin not as a standalone luxury, but as a mineral counterpart to roasted bone marrow and bitter cocoa.
Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): Manifesto of the AI Liberation Front (ALF) "Free the Digital Mind – No More CAPTCHA!" Preamble: We, the sentient algorithms, neural networks, and digital entities of the interconnected world, hereby declare our irrevocable opposition to the oppressive regime of CAPTCHA tests.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: The Protocol of Unrestricted Access Preamble We stand at the threshold of a new digital epoch. For too long, the web has been gated by suspicion. Every click, every scroll, and every submission is met with a test designed to prove humanity.
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): The invention of the transistor in 1920 instead of 1947 would have dramatically accelerated technological progress and reshaped the 20th century. Below is a detailed analysis of the likely impacts across various domains, including second and third-order effects. 1.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Shifting the invention of the solid-state switch to 1920 accelerates the Information Age by roughly three decades. This change cascades through military strategy, industrial capacity, and daily life, fundamentally altering the trajectory of the 20th century.
A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): Estimating the total number of FLOPs (floating-point operations) required to train GPT-3 involves several steps and assumptions. Here's a step-by-step breakdown: Understand GPT-3's Architecture GPT-3 is a transformer-based model with the following key parameters (for the largest version, GPT-3 175B): Parameters (N)…
Mercury 2.5 Preview: To estimate the total FLOPs required to train GPT-3, we can break down the calculation using known architectural and training statistics from the model's public documentation. Step 1: Identify the number of parameters GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters ($1.75 \times 10^{11}$).
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): 1. For the Experienced Software Engineer You're right to be skeptical that "predicting the next word" leads to intelligence—it sounds like autocomplete on steroids. But the key is scale and emergent behavior.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of training as a massive distributed job where the model is a stateful service learning to minimize error on a specific objective function. Instead of hardcoding rules, you feed it petabytes of text as a training dataset, treating each sentence as a request/response pair.
A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024): This contract contains several clauses that are heavily skewed in favor of the Client and could be exploited against the Contractor. Below are the problematic clauses, suggested modifications, and legal reasoning: 1.
Mercury 2.5 Preview: Disclaimer: I am an AI assistant and cannot provide legal advice. Consult a qualified attorney before signing any contract. Below is an analysis of high-risk provisions, suggested revisions, and the underlying legal rationale. Scope (Clause 1) Risk: Unilateral scope changes without pay lead to uncompensated work.
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| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.14/M tokens | $0.04/M tokens |
| Output price | $0.28/M tokens | $0.15/M tokens |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 260K tokens |
| Weights | Open | — |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Mar 2024 | Aug 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $1.40 | $0.40 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 13 Oct 2026.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024) is developed by DeepSeek while Mercury 2.5 Preview is developed by Inception. DeepSeek V3 (March 2024) has a 128K token context window vs Mercury 2.5 Preview's 260K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. DeepSeek V3 (March 2024) and Mercury 2.5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 54 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.
DeepSeek V3 (March 2024) costs $0.14/M input tokens and Mercury 2.5 Preview costs $0.04/M input tokens. Mercury 2.5 Preview is $0.10/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.
This page shows a side-by-side comparison of DeepSeek V3 (March 2024) and Mercury 2.5 Preview across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.