Model comparison

Granite 4.2 8B vs Mercury 2

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 11 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 8B IBM

40.5

Rank #148 Confirmed

Mercury 2 Inception

39.1

Rank #175 Confirmed

Summary

They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 8B scores higher in 3 categories and Mercury 2 in 4 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in coding, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 40.5 to 33.5.
Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
Granite 4.2 8B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 8B and Mercury 2 specifications
	Granite 4.2 8B	Mercury 2
Provider	IBM	Inception
Noometry Index	40.5	39.1
Released	—	2026-02-20
Weights	Open	Proprietary
Context window	131K	128K
Max output	118K	50K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.06	$0.25
Output $ / M tokens	$0.25	$0.75
Results tracked	11	17

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Category by category

Coding Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137), Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mercury 2
LMArena Coding	1380	1391
LMArena WebDev	—	1171
SciCode	—	38.7%
WeirdML	—	43.2%
ALE-Bench	—	785.58

Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131), Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mercury 2
LMArena Hard Prompts	1329	1362
CritPt	—	0.8%

Knowledge Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145), Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mercury 2
LMArena Expert	1384	1358
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	12.3%

Multilingual Mercury 2 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178), Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mercury 2
LMArena Non-English	1302	1331
LMArena Chinese	1366	1417
LMArena Russian	1285	1304

Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184), Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mercury 2
LMArena Instruction Following	1301	1329

Long Context Too close to call

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159), Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mercury 2
LMArena Longer Query	1324	1330

Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189), Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mercury 2
LMArena Text	1320	1355
LMArena Creative Writing	1236	1289
LMArena Multi-Turn	1301	1358

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Mercury 2?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Mercury 2?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

Is Granite 4.2 8B or Mercury 2 better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Granite 4.2 8B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Mercury 2 share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.