Model comparison
Mercury vs Step 3
Step 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.
StepFunSummary
- They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury scores higher in 0 categories and Step 3 in 6 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Step 3 leads 28.4 to 17.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 21.6% for Mercury and 62.3% for Step 3.
- Step 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury | Step 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 37.6 | 40.5 |
| Released | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Results tracked | 9 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Step 3 leads
Mercury: 38.7 (#170), Step 3: 40.1 (#147)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1322 | 1367 |
Reasoning Step 3 leads
Mercury: 17.5 (#293), Step 3: 28.4 (#105)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 21.6% | 62.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1285 | 1355 |
Math Not comparable
Mercury: —, Step 3: 37.6 (#148)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1366 |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mercury: —, Step 3: 36.8 (#164)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1333 |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mercury: —, Step 3: 35.5 (#86)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1177 |
Multilingual Step 3 leads
Mercury: 41.6 (#206), Step 3: 46.3 (#159)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1260 | 1327 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1397 |
| LMArena German | — | 1371 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1269 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1371 |
Instruction Following Step 3 leads
Mercury: 65.2 (#224), Step 3: 70.4 (#164)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1239 | 1332 |
Long Context Step 3 leads
Mercury: 38.4 (#198), Step 3: 40.3 (#157)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1266 | 1326 |
Writing & Preference Step 3 leads
Mercury: 46.2 (#221), Step 3: 54.3 (#151)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1282 | 1350 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1191 | 1321 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1282 | 1341 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury better than Step 3?
Step 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Is Mercury or Step 3 better for coding?
Step 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Mercury and Step 3 share?
9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury has 9 scored results on Noometry and Step 3 has 17.