Mercury 3 vs Step 5 Preview
Mercury 3 took 7 min 31 s and $0.065 at list price, Step 5 Preview took 10 min 44 s and $0.33 at list price. Step 5 Preview took 1.4× as long and cost 5.1× as much.
Mercury 3
Inception · $0.35/M out · 258 HN pts
Step 5 Preview
StepFun · $2.70/M out · 155 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 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 is a three-person workshop based in Rotterdam, dedicated to keeping vintage synthesizers alive and playable. We are technicians, musicians, and obsessive tinkerers who believe that classic analog instruments deserve better than silence. From temperamental Jupiter-8s to worn-out ARP Odysseys, we restore, repair, and maintain the machines that shaped the sound of modern music. Every repair starts with listening—both to the instrument and to the person who plays it. Whether you are chasing a rare fault, need a full calibration, or simply want your old synth to feel new again, our bench is open. We understand that no two synthesizers arrive with the same story, and we treat each circuit, slider, and key with the care its history deserves. At Patchbay, we are here to make sure the sounds of tomorrow are built on those that came before.
Specs and numbers
| Mercury 3 | Step 5 Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Inception | StepFun |
| Made in | US | China |
| Released | 16 Oct 2026 | 8 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $0.10 | $1.00 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $0.35 | $2.70 |
| Context | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | open |
| Hacker News points | 258 | 155 |
| Time for the six prompts | 7 min 31 s | 10 min 44 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.065 | $0.33 |
Mercury 3 was cheaper: $0.26 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Mercury 3 was faster: 3 min 13 s less in total, and faster on 4 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Mercury 3's Breakout game stopped painting; Step 5 Preview's plays.





