Mercury 3 vs Pareto 26.10
Mercury 3 took 7 min 31 s and $0.065 at list price, Pareto 26.10 took 12 min and $0.097 at list price. Pareto 26.10 took 1.6× as long and cost 1.5× as much.
Mercury 3
Inception · $0.35/M out · 258 HN pts
Pareto 26.10
Unbiased · $3.20/M out
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 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.
Patchbay was born from a simple frustration in Rotterdam: the belief that vintage synthesizers should be heard, not locked away in climate-controlled collections. Founded by three engineers and musicians who share an obsession with the raw, unpredictable character of analog gear, we operate out of a small studio where the smell of soldering iron and ozone is as common as coffee. We don’t just fix broken circuits; we restore the soul of these machines. Whether it’s a temperamental Moog, a glitchy Roland, or a rare obscure European find, we treat every patch cord and potentiometer with reverence and precision. Our trio combines decades of electronic music production experience with meticulous hardware restoration skills, ensuring that every repair honors the original design while making the instrument reliable for modern stage use. We believe that the quirks of vintage technology are features, not bugs. Our goal is to bridge the gap between historical preservation and contemporary creativity, giving these legendary instruments a second life in today’s soundscapes. Join us in keeping the analog signal chain alive.
Specs and numbers
| Mercury 3 | Pareto 26.10 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Inception | Unbiased |
| Made in | US | — |
| Released | 16 Oct 2026 | 15 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $0.10 | $0.80 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $0.35 | $3.20 |
| Context | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | closed |
| Hacker News points | 258 | — |
| Time for the six prompts | 7 min 31 s | 12 min |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.065 | $0.097 |
Mercury 3 was cheaper: $0.033 less at list price, and less on 5 of the 6 prompts. Mercury 3 was faster: 4 min 29 s less in total, and faster on 5 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Mercury 3's Breakout game stopped painting; Pareto 26.10's plays.





