Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Mercury 3
| Signal | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Delta | Mercury 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
Capabilities | 100 | +33 | |
Pricing | 100 | 0 | |
Context window size | 95 | -- | |
Recency | 100 | -- | |
Output Capacity | 82 | 0 | |
| Overall Result | 1 wins | of 5 | 2 wins |
Score History
69.9
current score
Claude Haiku 5.5
right now
40
current score
Claude Haiku 5.5
Anthropic
Mercury 3
Inception
Mercury 3 saves you $7.50/month
That's $90.00/year compared to Claude Haiku 5.5 at your current usage level of 100K calls/month.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Mercury 3 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall Score | 70 | 40 | Claude Haiku 5.5 |
| Rank | #122 | #191 | Claude Haiku 5.5 |
| Quality Rank | #122 | #191 | Claude Haiku 5.5 |
| Adoption Rank | #122 | #191 | Claude Haiku 5.5 |
| Parameters | -- | -- | -- |
| Context Window | 1000K | 1000K | -- |
| Pricing | $0.10/$0.50/M | $0.10/$0.35/M | -- |
| Signal Scores | |||
| Capabilities | 100 | 67 | Claude Haiku 5.5 |
| Pricing | 100 | 100 | Mercury 3 |
| Context window size | 95 | 95 | Claude Haiku 5.5 |
| Recency | 100 | 100 | Claude Haiku 5.5 |
| Output Capacity | 82 | 82 | Mercury 3 |
Our score (0-100) is driven by benchmark performance (90%) from Arena Elo ratings, MMLU, GPQA, HumanEval, SWE-bench, and 15+ standardized evaluations. Capabilities and context window serve as tiebreakers (10%). Learn more about our methodology.
Scores 70/100 (rank #122), placing it in the top 58% of all 290 models tracked.
Scores 40/100 (rank #191), placing it in the top 34% of all 290 models tracked.
Claude Haiku 5.5 has a 30-point advantage, which typically translates to noticeably stronger performance on complex reasoning, code generation, and multi-step tasks.
Choose Claude Haiku 5.5 when you need:
- Multimodal workflows that require image understanding
- Step-by-step reasoning and chain-of-thought problem solving
Choose Mercury 3 when you need:
- Step-by-step reasoning and chain-of-thought problem solving
Claude Haiku 5.5 offers 25% better value per quality point. At 1M tokens/day, you'd spend $6.75/month with Mercury 3 vs $9.00/month with Claude Haiku 5.5 - a $2.25 monthly difference.
Both models have comparable response speeds. For most applications, the latency difference is negligible.
When latency matters most: Interactive chatbots, IDE code completion, real-time translation, and user-facing applications where response time directly impacts experience. For batch processing, background summarization, or offline analysis, latency is less critical.
Code generation & review
Based on overall model capabilities and architecture for coding tasks like generating functions, debugging, and refactoring
Customer support chatbot
Suitable for user-facing chat with competitive response times. Mercury 3 also offers lower per-token costs for high-volume support
Long document analysis
Larger context window (1000K tokens) can process longer documents, contracts, and research papers in a single pass
Batch data extraction
Lower output pricing ($0.35/M) reduces costs when processing thousands of records daily
Creative writing & content
Higher overall composite score (70/100) correlates with better nuance, coherence, and style in long-form content
Image understanding & OCR
Supports vision input - can analyze screenshots, diagrams, photos, and scanned documents directly
Claude Haiku 5.5 clearly outperforms Mercury 3 with a significant 29.900000000000006-point lead. For most general use cases, Claude Haiku 5.5 is the stronger choice. However, Mercury 3 may still excel in niche scenarios.
By Use Case
Best for Quality
Claude Haiku 5.5
Marginally better benchmark scores; both are excellent
Best for Cost
Mercury 3
25% lower pricing; better value at scale
Best for Reliability
Claude Haiku 5.5
Higher uptime and faster response speeds
Best for Prototyping
Claude Haiku 5.5
Stronger community support and better developer experience
Best for Production
Claude Haiku 5.5
Wider enterprise adoption and proven at scale
by Anthropic
- Choose for Quality - Marginally better benchmark scores; both are excellent
- Choose for Reliability - Higher uptime and faster response speeds
- Choose for Prototyping - Stronger community support and better developer experience
- Choose for Production - Wider enterprise adoption and proven at scale
| Capability | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Mercury 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Vision (Image Input)differs | ||
| Function Calling | ||
| Streaming | ||
| JSON Mode | ||
| Reasoning | ||
| Web Searchdiffers | ||
| Image Output |
Claude Haiku 5.5
Anthropic
Mercury 3
Inception
Mercury 3 saves you $0.1800/month
That's 23% cheaper than Claude Haiku 5.5 at 1,000 tokens/request and 100 requests/day.
Assumes 60% input / 40% output token ratio per request. Actual costs may vary based on your usage pattern.
| Parameter | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Mercury 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Context Window | 1M | 1M |
| Max Output Tokens | 128,000 | 131,072 |
| Open Source | No | No |
| Created | Oct 7, 2026 | Oct 16, 2026 |