Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite vs Inception Mercury 3
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- Both cost about the same at a typical 3:1 input/output mix.
- Both accept prompts up to 1M tokens.
- Mercury 3 is the newer model (released 2026-10-16).
| Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Inception | |
| Released | 2025-07-22 | 2026-10-16 |
| Input / 1M | $0.10 | $0.10 |
| Output / 1M | $0.40 | $0.35 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.01 | $0.01 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.175 | $0.163 |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 66K | 131K |
| Accepts | text, image, file, audio, video | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 3 | 1 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $0.40 | $0.35 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 99.58% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | — |
Cost calculator
Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
$12.00 per month$0.40 per day
Mercury 3
$11.25 per month$0.38 per day
Mercury 3 saves $0.75 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite with