Model comparison
Granite 4.0 H Small vs Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 35.9 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.0 H Small scores higher in 2 categories and Mercury 2 in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 54.0 to 44.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Vectara Hallucination Rate: 5.2% for Granite 4.0 H Small and 12.3% for Mercury 2.
- Granite 4.0 H Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 35.9 | 38.8 |
| Released | — | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | 128K |
| Max output | — | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 19 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.0 H Small leads
Granite 4.0 H Small: 35.8 (#207), Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1247 | 1391 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1170 |
| SciCode | — | 38.7% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.2% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 785.58 |
Reasoning Too close to call
Granite 4.0 H Small: 23.4 (#164), Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1240 | 1362 |
| CritPt | — | 0.8% |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.0 H Small: 29.3 (#219), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 29.6% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1251 | — |
Knowledge Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.0 H Small: 31.5 (#210), Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.2% | 12.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1244 | 1358 |
| MMLU-Pro | 56.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 38.3% | — |
Multilingual Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.0 H Small: 38.7 (#223), Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1216 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1250 | 1416 |
| LMArena Russian | 1198 | 1303 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1258 | — |
Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.0 H Small: 68.9 (#178), Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1221 | 1328 |
| IFEval | 89% | — |
Long Context Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.0 H Small: 37.6 (#209), Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1240 | 1329 |
Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.0 H Small: 44.0 (#222), Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 H Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1241 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1210 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1243 | 1358 |
| WildBench | 73.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.0 H Small better than Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 35.9 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 4.0 H Small or Mercury 2 better for coding?
Granite 4.0 H Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.8 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 H Small and Mercury 2 share?
12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 H Small has 19 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.