DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) comes out ahead on the data we track: 3 advantages and none for Inception: Mercury 3.
| Spec | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) | Inception: Mercury 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Inception |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.11 | $0.10 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.33 | $0.35 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.17 | $0.16 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 73% | 73% |
| Context window | 1.0M tokens (~1,573 pages) | 1M tokens (~1,500 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 81% | 69% |
| Max output per response | 944K tokens (~707,800 words) | 131K tokens (~98,300 words) |
| Input types | text, image | text |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2026-08-21 | 2026-10-16 |
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) | Inception: Mercury 3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $14.85 | $14.50 | Inception: Mercury 3 saves $0.35 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $16.50 | $15.50 | Inception: Mercury 3 saves $1.00 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $17.16 | $16.20 | Inception: Mercury 3 saves $0.96 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $10.78 | $10.10 | Inception: Mercury 3 saves $0.68 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $5.83 | $5.35 | Inception: Mercury 3 saves $0.48 |
| Capability | DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) | Inception: Mercury 3 | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | ✓ Yes | — | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | — | — | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | — | — | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | — | — | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | ✓ Yes | — | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
No advantage on the data we track — pick it for provider preference or output quality on your own prompts.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) comes out ahead on the data we track: 3 advantages and none for Inception: Mercury 3.
Inception: Mercury 3 is cheaper: $0.16 vs $0.17 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 2% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $14.50 against $14.85.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) costs $0.11 per 1M input tokens and $0.33 per 1M output tokens; Inception: Mercury 3 costs $0.10 input and $0.35 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch): 1.0M tokens, about 1,573 pages, against 1M (about 1,500 pages) for Inception: Mercury 3.
Tool calling — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch): yes, Inception: Mercury 3: yes. JSON-schema structured output — DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch): yes, Inception: Mercury 3: yes.
Only DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) accepts image input; Inception: Mercury 3 is text-only for input.
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) can write up to 944K tokens (about 707,800 words) per response; Inception: Mercury 3 up to 131K (about 98,300 words).
DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) was listed on 2026-08-21; Inception: Mercury 3 on 2026-10-16.
DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp is an experimental vision-enabled version of [DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731](https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-0731) from DeepSeek, adding image understanding while matching the base model on text capabilities including agents,...
Full DeepSeek: DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp (batch) specs →Mercury 3 is a diffusion-based language model from Inception, and the lab's most capable model to date. It is suited for agentic workflows and real-time applications where latency compounds, such...
Full Inception: Mercury 3 specs →