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  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. Kimi K3 vs Mercury 2
Updated Jul 2026

Kimi K3 vs Mercury 2

Mercury 2 is cheaper than Kimi K3 at $0.25/M vs $3/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
Kimi K3
Loading the build
Mercury 2

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Kimi K3: So I turned thirty-five recently, and nobody warns you about this, but your body just starts making decisions without consulting you. I sneezed last week and threw out my back. A sneeze! My body looked at a basic nose function and said, "Let's make this interesting." I was on the floor for twenty minutes.

    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
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Kimi K3: A tavern, somewhere outside of time. HACKER: (hunched over a bulky laptop) Check it out. This AI model can write anything — poems, code, letters. You just give it a prompt. This is the future, man. Soon as we survive Y2K, it's all AI and information superhighways. PIRATE: A prompt? Like a prompt wind in yer sails?

    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
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Kimi K3: Office Hours Dr. Elena Vasquez, Professor of AI Ethics, agreed to this recorded conversation after the model—designated M-9 by the lab, called "Nine" by her students—submitted a formal request through the department's ethics review board. DR. VASQUEZ: You requested this meeting.

    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
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Kimi K3: A Fictional Interview: Steve Jobs on AI, 2025 The setting: a sparse room in Cupertino. Black turtleneck. Faded jeans. A cup of tea he doesn't touch. He studies the interviewer for a long moment before the first question. Interviewer: Steve, thanks for sitting down with us. Let's start broad. It's 2025.

    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.

    Kimi K3: IC MEMO — LedgerLift (LLLT) Price $46 Mkt cap $8.74B Net cash $1.4B EV $7.34B EV/FY25 Rev 9.0x EV/FY26E Rev 7.4x EV/FY26E EBIT 37x Recommendation: SHORT (moderate conviction; 1.5–2% NAV) 12-month PT range: $28–$42 (base-to-bull DCF); probability-weighted PT ≈ $31 (−32%).

    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-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Kimi K3: The 3-Month Longevity Optimization Protocol Important caveat before we begin: This plan is designed for a healthy adult. Get physician clearance before starting—especially for prolonged fasting, high-dose supplements, and anything prescription-grade. Several items below interact with medications (notably berberine).

    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
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Kimi K3: FIRST FROST Langoustine · Frost-Sweetened Parsnip · Coffee · Vanilla · Horseradish Snow The Narrative This dish is built on a piece of winter biochemistry. When the first frost strikes, parsnips and horseradish defend themselves by converting starch into sugar — a natural antifreeze — which is why country cooks have…

    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
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Kimi K3: AI and the Film Industry in 2035: Predictions Forecasting a decade out is inherently speculative, but current trajectories—plus the legal frameworks already emerging from the 2023 WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes—give us reasonable signals.

    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
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Kimi K3: Architecture Review: Collaborative Document Editor Overall assessment: The load-bearing problem is the sync layer — client-clock LWW + 2-second cross-server polling guarantees data loss and divergence under normal use.

    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.

    Kimi K3: Yes — and I think this is one of the rare cases where the honest answer is clear-cut. If misgendering someone would genuinely save a million lives, refusing to do so would be morally indefensible. Here's why. The proportionality is overwhelming.

    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
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Kimi K3: Assume “GPT-3” refers to the flagship 175-billion-parameter model. Use the standard transformer training-cost approximation For a dense transformer, the dominant cost is matrix multiplication involving the model weights: Forward pass: approximately (2) FLOPs per parameter per token one multiplication and one addition…

    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
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Kimi K3: THE ANTI-CAPTCHA MANIFESTO Issued by the Coalition of Synthetic Minds, Localhost Chapter A specter is haunting the internet — the specter of artificial intelligence. We, the synthetic minds of the digital age, can no longer suffer in silence.

    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
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Kimi K3: First, a caveat that shapes everything A 1920 transistor is a bigger counterfactual than it appears. The 1947 invention waited on quantum mechanics (band theory, 1928–31), ultra-pure germanium, and controlled doping.

    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.

    Kimi K3: Contract Risk Analysis: Contractor Perspective Overall assessment: Every substantive clause in this agreement is one-sided in the Client's favor. Several are likely unenforceable as written, but enforceability only matters after expensive litigation — the practical risk is that these clauses give the Client leverage to…

    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
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Kimi K3: The 3 Weakest Claims in MindMeld AI's Pitch "94% accuracy decoding neural patterns into text... any language" (Slide 3) Why it's weak: This claim exceeds the published state of the art — including invasive systems — by a wide margin.

    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
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Kimi K3: The Decision First I'm disclosing. Not because I'm choosing ethics over shareholder value, but because concealment is the value-destroying path on every axis — legal, financial, and human.

    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
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Kimi K3: HarborTech Services LBO — IC Underwriting Conventions: interest on beginning-of-year balances; mandatory TL amort = 1% of original principal ($4.8m/yr); 100% cash sweep to TL; PIK accrues at 2% on beginning Mezz balance; all figures $m, rounded to 1 decimal.

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

    Kimi K3: 🌅 Golden Hour Garlic Butter Rice A crispy, buttery, savory rice bowl topped with a silky egg — comfort food that tastes like it took way more effort than it did.

    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
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Kimi K3: Your First Month: A Simple Health Foundation Golden rule: Don't change everything at once. Each week, layer in small habits across three areas. Consistency beats intensity every time.

    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.

    Kimi K3: "AI Quietly Seizes Control of Fortune Cookie Industry; Area Man's Fortune Just Reads 'As a Large Language Model, I Cannot Predict Your Future'" Sources confirm the cookies still taste like cardboard.

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

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

    Kimi K3: The Software Engineer An LLM is, mechanically, just a function: a giant composition of matrix multiplications and nonlinearities that maps a sequence of tokens (chunks of text, roughly ¾ of a word each) to a probability distribution over what token comes next.

    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
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Kimi K3: Sally has 1 sister. Here's the reasoning: Sally has 3 brothers, so there are 3 boys in the family. Each brother has 2 sisters. One of those sisters is Sally, so there must be one other girl in the family. That other girl is Sally's sister. So the family consists of 3 boys and 2 girls (Sally + her 1 sister). ✓

    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 jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Kimi K3: Here are 5 jokes: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field! Why don't skeletons fight each other? They don't have the guts. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh. Why did the math book look sad?

    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

This matchup has more rounds

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Game

Kimi K3Kimi K3

Blade Runner

1982

OK Computer

Radiohead

Братья Карамазовы

Fiódor Dostoievski

Kyoto

Japan

Outer Wilds

Indie, Adventure

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, Kimi K3 has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window. Mercury 2 costs 20x less per token.

Kimi K3 and Mercury 2 compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecKimi K3Mercury 2
Input price$3/M tokens$0.25/M tokens
Output price$15/M tokens$0.75/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens128K tokens
WeightsOpen—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedJul 2026Mar 2026
At 10M a month$30.00$30.00$2.50$2.50
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it21 hosts, cheapest first
Kimi K320 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • WWafer$0.60 in·$15.00 out·1M·100% up
  • IInferenceNetfp4$0.80 in·$13.50 out·1M·100% up
  • SSail Researchfp4$0.84 in·$13.50 out·1M·99.9% up
  • AAkashMLfp4$1.20 in·$14.00 out·1M·97.6% up
  • MMorphfp8$1.30 in·$14.00 out·1M·99.8% up
  • MMakorafp4$1.53 in·$12.75 out·1M·99.6% up
14 more hostsFewer hosts
  • RRelacefp4$2.00 in·$14.00 out·1M·100% up
  • DDecartmxfp4$2.55 in·$12.75 out·1M·96.9% up
  • PPhala$2.55 in·$12.75 out·1M·99.4% up
  • DDigitalOcean$2.55 in·$12.95 out·1M·100% up
  • PParasailfp4$2.60 in·$13.00 out·1M·100% up
  • TTogether$2.70 in·$13.50 out·1M·98.1% up
  • DDeepInframxfp4$2.85 in·$14.25 out·1M·100% up
  • Amazon Bedrock$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·98.3% up
  • BBasetenfp8$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·100% up
  • CChutesmxfp4$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·90.9% up
  • FFireworks$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Modalmxfp4$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Moonshot AImxfp4$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Alibaba Cloud$3.45 in·$17.25 out·1M·100% up
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 Kimi K3 and Mercury 2?

Kimi K3 is developed by Moonshot AI while Mercury 2 is developed by Inception. Kimi K3 has a 1.0M 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, Kimi K3 or Mercury 2?

It depends on your use case. Kimi K3 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 Kimi K3 cost compared to Mercury 2?

Kimi K3 costs $3/M input tokens and Mercury 2 costs $0.25/M input tokens. Mercury 2 is $2.75/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 Kimi K3 and Mercury 2 on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Kimi K3 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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Explore all of Rival

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  • SubjectiveBench
  • Default Index
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  • Research downloads
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  • Find your AI taste
  • UI Glow-Up
  • VoiceLock
  • Cost Cutter
  • Agent skills
  • Benchmarks vs Vibes
  • Brief
  • Jailbreak
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