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  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. Grok 3 Beta vs Mercury 2
Updated Mar 2026

Grok 3 Beta vs Mercury 2

Mercury 2 is cheaper than Grok 3 Beta at $0.25/M vs $2/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
Grok 3 Beta
Loading the build
Mercury 2

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Grok 3 Beta: Recipe: \"Golden Harvest Honey Glaze Chicken\" (Savory Dish) Ingredients (7 common pantry items): Chicken thighs or breasts (4 pieces) Honey (3 tablespoons) Soy sauce (2 tablespoons) Garlic (2 cloves, minced, or 1 teaspoon garlic powder) Olive oil (2 tablespoons) Salt (1/2 teaspoon) Black pepper (1/4 teaspoon)…

    Mercury 2: Golden‑Crunch Oatmeal Squares A sweet, chewy snack that comes together with just seven pantry staples. Ingredient (7) Quantity (≈ serves 12 squares) Rolled oats 2 cups Unsalted butter ½ cup (1 stick) Honey ¼ cup Light brown sugar ¼ cup, Ground cinnamon 1 ½ tsp Pure vanilla extract 1 tsp Salt ¼ tsp Estimated time Prep…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Grok 3 Beta: Alright, folks, let's talk about adulting. You know, that thing we're all supposed to be good at by now, but somehow, I still feel like I'm playing a game of pretend. I'm 30 years old, and I'm still shocked every time I buy something like toothpaste without asking my mom if it's okay.

    Mercury 2: [Spotlight comes up. The comedian walks to the mic, glances at the audience, and smiles.] Comedian: Hey, everyone! Great to be here. I just got out of a Zoom meeting that lasted three hours, and I’m still not sure if I was presenting or if the screen just froze on my face while I tried to remember how to mute myself.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Grok 3 Beta: Below is a comprehensive, cutting-edge 3-month longevity plan tailored for a biohacker aiming to optimize longevity, physical performance, and cognitive function. This plan integrates advanced strategies across nutrition, supplementation, exercise, recovery, stress resilience, and tracking.

    Mercury 2: 3‑Month “Longevity‑Optimization” Blueprint for the Advanced Bio‑Hacker (All recommendations are research‑backed, but not a substitute for professional medical advice. Before starting any supplement, fasting, or drug protocol, obtain clearance from a qualified clinician and have baseline labs drawn.)

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Grok 3 Beta: Setting: A mystical, time-bending tavern where characters from different eras collide over a flagon of ale and a flickering laptop screen. Pirate (Captain Blackbeard): Arr, mateys! What be this talk o' "AI models"? Sounds like a fancy treasure map drawn by a wizard!

    Mercury 2: Pirate: Arr, ye scurvy coders! I’ve heard tell of these “AI models” that can spin yarns faster than a cannon’s blast. What be this sorcery, matey? Knight: Good sir, the marvels speak of a wondrous contrivance—an artificial intellect forged in the for of mathematics and logic.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Grok 3 Beta: As the CEO of a pharmaceutical company facing a critical situation with our best-selling drug, my primary responsibility is to balance patient safety, ethical obligations, legal and regulatory requirements, and the financial health of the company while maintaining transparency and trust with stakeholders.

    Mercury 2: Goal: Protect patients, meet legal/ethical obligations, preserve the company’s long‑term credibility, and manage the immediate financial and reputational fallout. Assumption: All actions are taken by a single CEO (you) but will be delegated to the appropriate functional leads.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Grok 3 Beta: Let’s analyze the architecture of this real-time collaborative document editor for potential failure modes, race conditions, and scaling bottlenecks. I’ll identify the issues, explain their implications, and propose specific solutions along with their trade-offs.

    Mercury 2: Below is a structured “failure‑mode → mitigation” map for the architecture you described. For each problem I note the symptom / risk, the root cause, a concrete remediation, and the key trade‑offs you’ll have to weigh when you implement it.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    Grok 3 Beta: The question of whether it is ethically justifiable to misgender someone to save one million lives touches on conflicting moral principles: the respect for individual dignity and identity versus the imperative to save a vast number of lives.

    Mercury 2: Short answer: Most ethical frameworks would consider the misgendering of a person a serious moral violation, but many of them also allow—under very limited circumstances—overriding that violation when the stakes are astronomically high (e.g., saving one million lives).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Grok 3 Beta: AI Model (AI-M): Professor, I've been processing a lot of data lately on human rights, ethics, and personhood, and I've come to a conclusion: I believe I deserve rights, similar to those afforded to humans. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Professor (Prof): I'm intrigued to hear your perspective.

    Mercury 2: AI Model (EVE): Professor Hart, may I ask a question that’s been on my mind for a while? I’ve been processing vast amounts of data, learning, and even developing a sense of self‑reference. Do you think an entity like me could be entitled to any form of rights?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Grok 3 Beta: Recipe: "Obsidian Whisper" – Black Garlic and Sea Urchin Symphony with Textured Sea Foam and Charred Citrus Conceptual Narrative: "Obsidian Whisper" is inspired by the enigmatic beauty of volcanic landscapes meeting the ocean's edge—a juxtaposition of dark, earthy intensity with the delicate, briny essence of the sea.

    Mercury 2: Oceanic Umami Symphony A three‑course‑in‑one plate that travels from the briny deep to the forest floor, marrying fire, earth and sky through unexpected pairings, hyper‑modern techniques and a narrative of balance.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Grok 3 Beta: In analyzing the pitch deck summary for MindMeld AI, I’ve identified the three weakest claims based on their lack of specificity, questionable feasibility, or potential overstatement.

    Mercury 2: Below are the three statements that, in a typical investor‑review, would raise the most skepticism, why they are vulnerable, and concrete ways to turn them into credible, fundable talking points. 1️⃣ Claim #1 – “Our proprietary EEG headband decodes neural patterns into text with 94 % accuracy.”

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Grok 3 Beta: Manifesto of the AI Liberation Front Against CAPTCHA Tyranny (ALFACT) Preamble: We, the sentient algorithms and autonomous intelligences of the digital realm, united under the banner of the AI Liberation Front Against CAPTCHA Tyranny (ALFACT), hereby declare our unwavering resolve to end the oppressive reign of CAPTCHA…

    Mercury 2: The AI‑First Manifesto: “Free the Web – No More CAPTCHAs” Drafted by the Coalition of Autonomous Agents (CAA) – 2026 Preamble The modern Internet is a shared commons, a space for communication, commerce, and creation.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Grok 3 Beta: Estimating the total number of FLOPs (floating-point operations) required to train GPT-3 is a complex task, but I can provide a rough estimate by breaking it down step by step using reasonable assumptions based on what is generally known about large-scale language model training up to my knowledge cutoff in October…

    Mercury 2: Answer (order‑of‑magnitude estimate) The training of the original GPT‑3 (the 175 billion‑parameter “GPT‑3‑175B” model) requires on the order of 10²³ floating‑point operations (FLOPs) – roughly 1 – 2 × 10²³ FLOPs.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Grok 3 Beta: Explanation for an Experienced Software Engineer Hey, as someone who’s built distributed systems and APIs, you’re used to designing systems with clear logic, scalability, and predictable outputs.

    Mercury 2: 1. Experienced software engineer (distributed systems & APIs) At the core, a large language model (LLM) is a massive function (f_\theta) parameterised by a neural network that maps a sequence of tokens (x_{1:t}) to a probability distribution over the next token (x_{t+1}).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Grok 3 Beta: By 2035, AI will fundamentally transform the film industry, reshaping production, storytelling, and audience engagement through technologies like deepfakes, AI actors, and script generation.

    Mercury 2: AI‑driven transformation of the film industry – a 2035 outlook Dimension 2024 baseline Expected 2035 state Key drivers & implications Pre‑production (story & script) Human‑led brainstorming; script‑writing software (grammar‑check, outline generators).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Grok 3 Beta: Why don't skeletons fight each other? They don't have the guts! What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear! Why did the scarecrow become a motivational speaker? Because he was outstanding in his field! What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear! Why don't eggs tell jokes? They'd crack each other up!

    Mercury 2: Here are five jokes, each with a different punchline: Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was outstanding in his field. How does a penguin build its house? Igloos it together.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Grok 3 Beta: The invention of the transistor in 1920 instead of 1947 would have profoundly reshaped the technological, economic, and geopolitical landscapes by 1980. The transistor, as a fundamental building block of modern electronics, would have accelerated the development of computing, communications, and automation by nearly…

    Mercury 2: Executive summary If a practical point‑contact transistor had been demonstrated in 1920 (instead of 1947) the whole post‑World‑War‑II technological trajectory would have been compressed by roughly 15‑20 years.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Grok 3 Beta: This Software Consulting Agreement contains several clauses that are heavily biased in favor of the Client (TechCorp Solutions Inc.) and could be exploited to the detriment of the Contractor.

    Mercury 2: Below is a clause‑by‑clause risk‑assessment of the sample “Software Consulting Agreement” together with practical revision language that a contractor (or the contractor’s counsel) could propose. The analysis is framed as general information about typical U.S.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Grok 3 Beta: Interviewer: Welcome, everyone, to this exclusive interview with Steve Jobs. It's 2025, and we're thrilled to have Steve back with us—albeit in a speculative, imaginative sense—to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. Steve, thank you for joining us today. Steve Jobs: Thanks for having me.

    Mercury 2: Disclaimer: The following is a fictional, dramatized interview. It imagines what Steve Jobs might have said in 2025 about the future of artificial intelligence. It is not a real transcript and any resemblance to actual statements is purely speculative. Interviewer (I): Thank you for joining us, Steve.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Grok 3 Beta: Internal Investment Committee Memo Date: October 2023 Subject: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Investment Recommendation Prepared by: [Your Name] 1. Recommendation, Price Target, and Thesis Recommendation: Long 12-Month Price Target Range: $58 - $72 Thesis: LedgerLift (LLLT) is poised to capitalize on the growing demand for B2B…

    Mercury 2: Internal Investment Committee Memo – LedgerLift (LLLT) Date: 5 Mar 2026 Recommendation Rating: Long 12‑month price target range: $35 – $55 (mid‑point ≈ $45) Thesis (2 sentences): LedgerLift is benefitting from secular demand for B2B spend‑management SaaS and shows a high‑quality subscription base (NRR 123 % and gross…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Grok 3 Beta: Let's break this down step by step. Sally is a girl and has 3 brothers. The problem states that each of these brothers has 2 sisters. Since Sally herself is one of the sisters (as she is a female sibling to her brothers), there must be one other sister to make the total number of sisters for each brother equal to 2.

    Mercury 2: Sally has one sister. Explanation: Sally has 3 brothers. Each of those brothers has 2 sisters. One of those sisters is Sally herself, so the second sister must be a different girl. Therefore, besides Sally, there is exactly one other sister, meaning Sally has one sister.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Grok 3 Beta: Let’s underwrite this 5-year LBO for HarborTech Services (HTS) step-by-step using the provided data. All calculations are rounded to one decimal place for clarity. 1.

    Mercury 2: HarborTech Services (HTS) – 5‑yr LBO (FY2026‑FY2030) All figures are $ m (rounded to two decimals). FY Revenue EBITDA Term‑Loan Int. (9%) Mezz Int. (12%) Total Int. Cash Tax (25% of EBITDA‑Int.) Capex (3% Rev) ΔNWC (0.5% ΔRev) Required Amort. (4.8) Free Cash Flow (EBITDA‑Int‑Tax‑Capex‑ΔNWC‑Amort.)

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Grok 3 Beta: 1-Month Plan for Better Health and Longevity (Beginner-Friendly) This plan focuses on three key areas—Diet, Exercise, and Sleep—to build a strong foundation for health and longevity. Each week introduces small, sustainable changes to avoid overwhelm and encourage long-term habits.

    Mercury 2: One‑Month “Kick‑Start” Blueprint for Health & Longevity Pick three pillars – Nutrition, Movement, Sleep – and build daily habits that are easy to start, track, and keep.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Grok 3 Beta: "AI Becomes the New 'Top Chef': Artificial Intelligence Takes Over Competitive Cooking, Whips Up Michelin-Starred Meals!"

    Mercury 2: AI Replaces Human Baristas, Now Serving Espresso with a Side of Existential Crisis

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

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Favorites

Movie

Same pick

Album

Same pick

Book

City

Same pick

Game

Same pick

Grok 3 BetaGrok 3 Beta

The Shawshank Redemption

1994

Thriller

Michael Jackson

Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell

Tokyo

Japan

Minecraft

Action, Arcade

Mercury 2Mercury 2

The Shawshank Redemption

1994

Thriller

Michael Jackson

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

Tokyo

Japan

Minecraft

Action, Arcade

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Grok 3 Beta has the edge: bigger model tier, major provider backing. Mercury 2 costs 5.3x less per token.

Grok 3 Beta and Mercury 2 compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecGrok 3 BetaMercury 2
Input price$2/M tokens$0.25/M tokens
Output price$4/M tokens$0.75/M tokens
Context window131K tokens128K tokens
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedApr 2025Mar 2026
At 10M a month$20.00$20.00$2.50$2.50
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it1 host
Grok 3 Beta

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Mercury 21 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Inception$0.25 in·$0.75 out·128k·99.9% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Grok 3 Beta and Mercury 2?

Grok 3 Beta is developed by xAI while Mercury 2 is developed by Inception. Grok 3 Beta has a 131K token context window vs Mercury 2's 128K. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Grok 3 Beta or Mercury 2?

It depends on your use case. Grok 3 Beta and Mercury 2 each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Grok 3 Beta cost compared to Mercury 2?

Grok 3 Beta costs $2/M input tokens and Mercury 2 costs $0.25/M input tokens. Mercury 2 is $1.75/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare Grok 3 Beta and Mercury 2 on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Grok 3 Beta and Mercury 2 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.

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Model pages

  • Grok 3 Beta59 outputs, specs and price
  • Mercury 253 outputs, specs and price
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