• Updated 31 Oct, 14:35 UTC
  • Next run 1 Nov, 05:17 UTCNext 1 Nov 05:17
  • Last 7 days: 4 new models · 448 runs7 d: 4 models · 448 runs
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Mercury 3 vs Gemini 4 Argon

6 prompts both ran·Specs and numbers·Change models

Mercury 3 took 7 min 31 s and $0.065 at list price, Gemini 4 Argon took 13 min 43 s and $0.68 at list price. Gemini 4 Argon took 1.8× as long and cost 10× as much.

Mercury 3

Inception · $0.35/M out · 258 HN pts

Gemini 4 Argon

Google · $10.00/M out · 2,036 HN pts

Pelican

Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle

Mercury 3's SVG for the "Pelican riding a bicycle" prompt

Mercury 3

1 min 30 s$0.01028k tokensAPI
Gemini 4 Argon's SVG for the "Pelican riding a bicycle" prompt

Gemini 4 Argon

2 min 11 s$0.1111k tokensAPI

Watch

Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.

Still of Mercury 3's page for the "Wristwatch that shows the current time" prompt

Mercury 3

70 s$0.01233k tokensAPI
Still of Gemini 4 Argon's page for the "Wristwatch that shows the current time" prompt

Gemini 4 Argon

2 min 32 s$0.1313k tokensAPI

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.

Still of Mercury 3's page for the "Landing page for a cargo bike workshop" prompt

Mercury 3

42 s$0.00720k tokensAPI
Still of Gemini 4 Argon's page for the "Landing page for a cargo bike workshop" prompt

Gemini 4 Argon

4 min 14 s$0.2121k tokensAPI

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.

Still of Mercury 3's page for the "Playable Breakout" prompt

Mercury 3

29 s$0.00719k tokensAPI
Still of Gemini 4 Argon's page for the "Playable Breakout" prompt

Gemini 4 Argon

2 min 46 s$0.1414k tokensAPI

Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.

Mercury 3's SVG for the "Bookshop logo" prompt

Mercury 3

3 min 38 s$0.02983k tokensAPI
Gemini 4 Argon's SVG for the "Bookshop logo" prompt

Gemini 4 Argon

1 min 52 s$0.0929.2k tokensAPI

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 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.

Mercury 3

3 s<$0.0011.2k tokensAPI

In a quiet industrial building overlooking the Maas, the air smells of warm dust, solder flux, and ozone. This is Patchbay, a three-person workshop in Rotterdam dedicated to keeping the golden age of electronic music alive. We don’t view vintage synthesizers as museum pieces to be locked behind glass. To us, a Roland Jupiter-8 or an ARP Odyssey is a living, breathing instrument meant to be played, gigged, and pushed to its sonic limits.

Between the three of us, we have spent decades deciphering faded schematics, hunting down obsolete transistors, and cleaning decades of club grime from beneath weighted keys. Rotterdam is a city built on raw electronics and relentless rhythms, and we take pride in keeping its hardware running. Whether you bring us a touring workhorse with a dead voice chip or a garage-find modular rig that hasn’t powered on since 1984, we are here to make it sing again.

Gemini 4 Argon

8 s$0.002196 tokensAPI

Specs and numbers

Mercury 3Gemini 4 Argon
MakerInceptionGoogle
Made inUSUS
Released16 Oct 202613 Oct 2026
Price in, per M tokens$0.10$2.00
Price out, per M tokens$0.35$10.00
Context1,000,000 tokens1,048,576 tokens
Weightsclosedclosed
Hacker News points2582,036
Time for the six prompts7 min 31 s13 min 43 s
List price of the six prompts$0.065$0.68

Mercury 3 was cheaper: $0.61 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Mercury 3 was faster: 6 min 12 s less in total, and faster on 5 of the 6 prompts.

In the recording, Mercury 3's Breakout game stopped painting; Gemini 4 Argon's plays.

Rebuild this screen experiment: Gemini 4 Argon's rebuild matched the screenshot at 69%; Mercury 3 was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Gemini 4 Argon's game passed 5 of 5 checks; Mercury 3 was not in it.

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