Model comparison

Gemma 3 4B vs Mercury 2

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 28.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 4B costs 7.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 11 shared benchmarks.

Gemma 3 4B

Google

28.1

Rank #326 Confirmed

Mercury 2 Inception

39.1

Rank #175 Confirmed

Summary

They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 4B scores higher in 1 category and Mercury 2 in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mercury 2 leads 36.2 to 11.8.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is Vectara Hallucination Rate: 6.4% for Gemma 3 4B and 12.3% for Mercury 2.
Gemma 3 4B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
Gemma 3 4B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
Gemma 3 4B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Gemma 3 4B and Mercury 2 specifications
	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
Provider	Google	Inception
Noometry Index	28.1	39.1
Released	2025-03-12	2026-02-20
Weights	Open	Proprietary
Context window	131K	128K
Max output	4K	50K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.04	$0.25
Output $ / M tokens	$0.08	$0.75
Results tracked	22	17

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Gemma 3 4B leads

Gemma 3 4B: 35.9 (#215), Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
LMArena Coding	1230	1391
LMArena WebDev	—	1171
SciCode	—	38.7%
WeirdML	—	43.2%
ALE-Bench	—	785.58

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Gemma 3 4B: 20.9 (#142), Mercury 2: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	19.6%	—

Reasoning Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 13.2 (#335), Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
LMArena Hard Prompts	1253	1362
Kagi LLM Benchmark	25.2%	—
CritPt	—	0.8%
Chess Puzzles	0%	—
DTBench	50.9%	—
LMCA	2.8%	—
Epoch Capabilities Index	116.02	—

Math Not comparable

Gemma 3 4B: 16.8 (#292), Mercury 2: —

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	7.5%	—
LMArena Math	1239	—

Knowledge Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 11.8 (#299), Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
Vectara Hallucination Rate	6.4%	12.3%
LMArena Expert	1223	1358
GPQA Diamond	23.2%	—

Multilingual Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 42.5 (#194), Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
LMArena Non-English	1273	1331
LMArena Russian	1294	1304
LMArena Chinese	—	1417
LMArena German	1281	—

Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 65.2 (#225), Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
LMArena Instruction Following	1239	1329

Long Context Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 38.7 (#194), Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
LMArena Longer Query	1273	1330

Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 42.0 (#239), Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mercury 2
LMArena Text	1291	1355
LMArena Creative Writing	1271	1289
LMArena Multi-Turn	1255	1358
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	1068	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemma 3 4B better than Mercury 2?

Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 4B or Mercury 2?

Gemma 3 4B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

Is Gemma 3 4B or Mercury 2 better for coding?

Gemma 3 4B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.9 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemma 3 4B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 4B and Mercury 2 share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 4B has 22 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.