Model comparison
Claude Fable 5 vs Mercury 2
Claude Fable 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 66.8 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 53× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Fable 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Fable 5 scores higher in 7 categories and Mercury 2 in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Fable 5 leads 76.8 to 23.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 91.9% for Claude Fable 5 and 43.2% for Mercury 2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $10 / $50 for Claude Fable 5.
- Claude Fable 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 66.8 | 39.1 |
| Released | 2026-06-07 | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 128K |
| Max output | 128K | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $10 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $50 | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 62 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Fable 5 leads
Claude Fable 5: 70.6 (#4), Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1625 | 1171 |
| SciCode | 61% | 38.7% |
| WeirdML | 91.9% | 43.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1519 | 1391 |
| ALE-Bench | 2,041 | 785.58 |
| DeepSWE | 69.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 53.5% | — |
| FrontierSWE | 47% | — |
| GSO | 78.4% | — |
| MirrorCode | 63.9% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Fable 5: 54.0 (#2), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 63.6% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 16.1% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 39.7% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 41.8% | — |
| GBAEval | 74.5% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 30% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1230 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,680 | — |
Reasoning Claude Fable 5 leads
Claude Fable 5: 76.8 (#6), Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 28.6% | 0.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1508 | 1362 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 89.2% | — |
| SimpleBench | 81.9% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 91.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 92.7% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 98.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 41% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 39.3% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 39.5% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 52% | — |
| DTBench | 98.4% | — |
| LMCA | 61.1% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 95% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.13 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 162.06 | — |
Math Not comparable
Claude Fable 5: 88.5 (#5), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 87% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 90.2% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | — |
| ProofBench | 95% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1519 | — |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 0% | — |
Knowledge Claude Fable 5 leads
Claude Fable 5: 62.2 (#25), Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1534 | 1358 |
| GPQA Diamond | 85.9% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 70.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.3% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Fable 5: 45.3 (#17), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1324 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 38.6% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 35.8% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1496 | — |
Multilingual Claude Fable 5 leads
Claude Fable 5: 57.3 (#9), Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1481 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1543 | 1417 |
| LMArena Russian | 1504 | 1304 |
| LMArena French | 1505 | — |
| LMArena German | 1486 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1506 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1488 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1498 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Fable 5 leads
Claude Fable 5: 78.6 (#8), Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1502 | 1329 |
Long Context Claude Fable 5 leads
Claude Fable 5: 46.3 (#23), Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1509 | 1330 |
Writing & Preference Claude Fable 5 leads
Claude Fable 5: 75.9 (#5), Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1491 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1494 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1504 | 1358 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1943 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1340 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Fable 5 better than Mercury 2?
Claude Fable 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 66.8 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 53× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Fable 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Fable 5 or Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Claude Fable 5 lists at $10 and $50.
Is Claude Fable 5 or Mercury 2 better for coding?
Claude Fable 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 70.6 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Fable 5 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Fable 5 and Mercury 2 share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Fable 5 has 62 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.