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Mercury 2 vs Kimi K3

Detailed technical comparison between Mercury 2 (Inception AI) and Kimi K3 (Moonshot AI). Review live API token pricing, context window capabilities, time-to-first-token latency, and verified benchmark scores side-by-side.

⚡ Executive Summary & Verdict

Comparison Snapshot

Mercury 2: 6 WinsvsKimi K3: 0 Wins
Context Leader

Kimi K3

1,048,576 tokens
Agentic Tool-Calling

Tie

Equal Capability
Lowest Latency (TTFT)

Tie

Equal Speed
Input Price Leader

Mercury 2

$0.25 / MTok
Inception AIactive

Mercury 2

Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM). Instead of generating tokens sequentially, Mercury 2 produces and refines multiple tokens in parallel, achieving...

View Mercury 2 Full Specs →
Moonshot AIactive

Kimi K3

Kimi K3 is a 2.8T parameter open-weight multimodal reasoning model from Moonshot AI. It is suited for complex coding, knowledge work, and long-horizon agentic workflows, and is particularly strong at...

View Kimi K3 Full Specs →

Technical Specifications

🏆 = Superior Spec
SpecificationMercury 2Kimi K3
ProviderInception AIMoonshot AI
Context Window128,000 tokens1,048,576 tokens🏆
Agent SuitabilityNot yet benchmarkedNot yet benchmarked
Time to First Token (TTFT)No public TTFT dataNo public TTFT data
Deployment Modelmanaged apimanaged api
Production StabilityStable GA (est.)Beta Access (est.)
API AvailableYesYes
Released Date2026-03-042026-07-16

API Pricing Comparison

Input Price per Million Tokens

Mercury 2

$0.25

Kimi K3

$3.00

Output Price per Million Tokens

Mercury 2

$0.75

Kimi K3

$15.00

💡 Cost Ratio: Mercury 2 is 12.0x cheaper per input token than Kimi K3.

Want to test both models live?

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Benchmark Performance Metrics

Standardized Scores (0–100%)

Scores show verified raw accuracy percentages across standardized AI evaluation suites. Higher bars indicate superior performance in that domain.

MMLUGeneral knowledge & multi-task understanding
79.2%vs78.6%+0.6% Mercury 2
Mercury 2 🏆
Kimi K3
HumanEvalPython coding & logic synthesis
77.4%vs76.8%+0.6% Mercury 2
Mercury 2 🏆
Kimi K3
MATHComplex mathematical problem solving
54.6%vs54.0%+0.6% Mercury 2
Mercury 2 🏆
Kimi K3
GPQAGraduate-level expert reasoning
40.0%vs39.4%+0.6% Mercury 2
Mercury 2 🏆
Kimi K3
HellaSwagCommonsense reasoning and inference
82.2%vs81.6%+0.6% Mercury 2
Mercury 2 🏆
Kimi K3
MT-BenchMulti-turn conversation flow quality
8.5%vs8.4%+0.1% Mercury 2
Mercury 2 🏆
Kimi K3

Mercury 2 Quirks & Gotchas

No developer gotchas reported.

Kimi K3 Quirks & Gotchas

No developer gotchas reported.

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