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Mercury 3 vs Nemotron 3 Ultra

6 prompts both ran·Specs and numbers·Change models

Mercury 3 took 7 min 31 s and $0.065 at list price, Nemotron 3 Ultra took 14 min 14 s and $0.15 at list price. Nemotron 3 Ultra took 1.9× as long and cost 2.3× as much.

Mercury 3

Inception · $0.35/M out · 258 HN pts

Nemotron 3 Ultra

NVIDIA · $2.40/M out · free route · 48 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
Nemotron 3 Ultra's SVG for the "Pelican riding a bicycle" prompt

Nemotron 3 Ultra

56 s$0.0114.7k 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 Nemotron 3 Ultra's page for the "Wristwatch that shows the current time" prompt

Nemotron 3 Ultra

2 min 56 s$0.02912k 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 Nemotron 3 Ultra's page for the "Landing page for a cargo bike workshop" prompt

Nemotron 3 Ultra

4 min 25 s$0.05824k 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 Nemotron 3 Ultra's page for the "Playable Breakout" prompt

Nemotron 3 Ultra

3 min 39 s$0.03314k 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
Nemotron 3 Ultra's SVG for the "Bookshop logo" prompt

Nemotron 3 Ultra

1 min 42 s$0.0135.6k 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

Patchbay began in a narrow workshop on the edge of Rotterdam’s Noord district, where the hum of aging oscillators meets the rhythm of the city’s canals. Founded by three synth enthusiasts — a former studio engineer, a circuit designer, and a musician who still plays the same Juno‑106 he bought in 1986 — the studio grew from late‑night repair sessions into a dedicated space for restoring the instruments that shaped electronic music’s golden era. Every unit that passes through our bench is treated with the same reverence we give a first‑press vinyl: capacitors are swapped, contacts cleaned, and calibration traced back to original service manuals. We don’t just fix synthesizers; we listen to their history, understand their quirks, and return them to the stage or studio ready to inspire the next generation of sound. Patchbay is small, intentional, and built on the belief that vintage gear deserves a future as vivid as its past.

Nemotron 3 Ultra

36 s$0.0031.1k tokensAPI

Specs and numbers

Mercury 3Nemotron 3 Ultra
MakerInceptionNVIDIA
Made inUSUS
Released16 Oct 20264 Jun 2026
Price in, per M tokens$0.10free route (list $0.60/M)
Price out, per M tokens$0.35free route (list $2.40/M)
Context1,000,000 tokens262,144 tokens
Weightsclosedopen
Hacker News points25848
Time for the six prompts7 min 31 s14 min 14 s
List price of the six prompts$0.065$0.15

Mercury 3 was cheaper: $0.082 less at list price, and less on 5 of the 6 prompts. Mercury 3 was faster: 6 min 43 s less in total, and faster on 4 of the 6 prompts.

In the recording, Mercury 3's Breakout game stopped painting; Nemotron 3 Ultra's loads but doesn't start.

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