DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 vs Mercury 3
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 took 7 min 16 s and $0.068 at list price, Mercury 3 took 7 min 31 s and $0.065 at list price. Both took about as long, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 cost 1.1× as much.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
DeepSeek · $0.60/M out · 1,693 HN pts
Mercury 3
Inception · $0.35/M out · 258 HN pts
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is a three-person studio in Rotterdam devoted to keeping vintage synthesizers making the sounds they were built to make. We repair, service and restore analog instruments from the late 1960s onward, from familiar Moogs and ARPs to oddities with no service manual. Every synth that comes through the door is treated as a working instrument rather than a museum piece. We trace faults, rebuild power supplies, refresh capacitors, clean keybeds and calibrate oscillators, always with an eye on reliability and the character that made the machine worth saving. We document what we do, explain the options clearly and never replace more than necessary. Whether you need one dead voice brought back or a full restoration, we work carefully, at the bench and in conversation with you. Old synths belong on records and stages, and our job is to keep them there.
Patchbay is a three-person repair studio in Rotterdam, tucked between a bike shop and a coffee roastery, where vintage synthesizers come to live another life. We are not a factory and we are not a museum; we are technicians who love the smell of warm solder and the patience that old circuits demand. Between us we have restored everything from early Moog modulars to battered Junos, and we treat each instrument as if it were the first one we ever opened. There is no assembly line here. Every capacitor is tested, every busbar tracked by hand, and every voice board is listened to twice—once on the bench, once through the speakers of the synth that will use it. Patchbay exists because these machines deserve more than a quick fix. They deserve someone who knows their quirks, their failures, and the strange, beautiful sounds that made us fall in love with them in the first place.
Specs and numbers
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 | Mercury 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | DeepSeek | Inception |
| Made in | China | US |
| Released | 17 Oct 2026 | 16 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $0.15 | $0.10 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $0.60 | $0.35 |
| Context | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Weights | open | closed |
| Hacker News points | 1,693 | 258 |
| Time for the six prompts | 7 min 16 s | 7 min 31 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.068 | $0.065 |
Mercury 3 was cheaper: $0.004 less at list price, and less on 3 of the 6 prompts. Both took about as long in total; Mercury 3 was faster on 4 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017's Breakout game plays; Mercury 3's stopped painting.
Rebuild this screen experiment: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017's rebuild matched the screenshot at 57%; Mercury 3 was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017's game passed 5 of 5 checks; Mercury 3 was not in it.





