Kimi K3.1 Pro vs Mercury 3
Kimi K3.1 Pro took 32 min 17 s and $1.27 at list price, Mercury 3 took 7 min 31 s and $0.065 at list price. Kimi K3.1 Pro took 4.3× as long and cost 20× as much.
Kimi K3.1 Pro
Moonshot AI · $10.00/M out · 1,168 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 alive, playable, and full of character. We work on instruments that have spent decades in studios, bedrooms, and tour cases, and we believe each one deserves more than a quick fix. From drifting oscillators and noisy sliders to tired keybeds and mysterious faults, we take the time to listen, diagnose, and repair with care.
Our approach combines patient troubleshooting, period-correct components where possible, and a deep respect for the original sound. We do not believe in erasing an instrument’s history; we preserve the quirks that make it worth loving. Whether your synthesizer needs a full overhaul or a little help getting back on stage, you will always know who is working on it and why. Patchbay exists for the joy of switching on an old machine and hearing it come back to life.
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
| Kimi K3.1 Pro | Mercury 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI | Inception |
| Made in | China | US |
| Released | 23 Oct 2026 | 16 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $2.00 | $0.10 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $10.00 | $0.35 |
| Context | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Weights | closed | closed |
| Hacker News points | 1,168 | 258 |
| Time for the six prompts | 32 min 17 s | 7 min 31 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $1.27 | $0.065 |
Mercury 3 was cheaper: $1.20 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Mercury 3 was faster: 24 min 46 s less in total, and faster on 5 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Kimi K3.1 Pro's Breakout game plays; Mercury 3's stopped painting.
Rebuild this screen experiment: Kimi K3.1 Pro's rebuild matched the screenshot at 87%; Mercury 3 was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Kimi K3.1 Pro's game passed 5 of 5 checks; Mercury 3 was not in it.