Model comparison

Kimi K2.5 vs Mercury 2

Kimi K2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.1 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 2.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Kimi K2.5 Moonshot AI

48.1

Rank #57 Confirmed

Mercury 2 Inception

39.1

Rank #175 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2.5 scores higher in 7 categories and Mercury 2 in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Kimi K2.5 leads 53.6 to 36.2.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 49% for Kimi K2.5 and 38.7% for Mercury 2.
  • Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.45 / $2.25 for Kimi K2.5.
  • Kimi K2.5 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
  • Kimi K2.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Kimi K2.5 and Mercury 2 specifications
Kimi K2.5Mercury 2
ProviderMoonshot AIInception
Noometry Index48.139.1
Released2026-01-272026-02-20
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window262K128K
Max output262K50K
Input $ / M tokens$0.45$0.25
Output $ / M tokens$2.25$0.75
Results tracked5117

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Category by category

Coding Kimi K2.5 leads

Kimi K2.5: 48.8 (#53), Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
LMArena WebDev14371171
SciCode49%38.7%
WeirdML45.6%43.2%
LMArena Coding14741391
ALE-Bench821.65785.58
SWE-bench Verified73.8%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)70.8%—
SWE-bench Multilingual67.3%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Kimi K2.5: 34.2 (#48), Mercury 2: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
Terminal-Bench43.2%—
OSWorld63.3%—
Vending-Bench 21,198—

Reasoning Kimi K2.5 leads

Kimi K2.5: 31.2 (#80), Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
CritPt3.1%0.8%
LMArena Hard Prompts14531362
ARC-AGI-211.8%—
SimpleBench46.8%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark78.5%—
NYT Connections (extended)69.9%—
ARC-AGI-165.3%—
Chess Puzzles12%—
EnigmaEval3.4%—
Thematic Generalization69.4%—
Epoch Capabilities Index148.03—

Math Not comparable

Kimi K2.5: 51.8 (#53), Mercury 2: —

Knowledge Kimi K2.5 leads

Kimi K2.5: 53.6 (#56), Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
Vectara Hallucination Rate14.2%12.3%
LMArena Expert14661358
GPQA Diamond87.6%—
Humanity's Last Exam24.4%—
SimpleQA Verified34.3%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Kimi K2.5: 41.1 (#39), Mercury 2: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
LMArena Vision1269—
LMArena Document1430—

Multilingual Kimi K2.5 leads

Kimi K2.5: 53.9 (#53), Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
LMArena Non-English14331331
LMArena Chinese14951417
LMArena Russian14351304
LMArena French1454—
LMArena German1441—
LMArena Japanese1421—
LMArena Korean1410—
LMArena Spanish1450—

Instruction Following Kimi K2.5 leads

Kimi K2.5: 75.3 (#64), Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
LMArena Instruction Following14311329

Long Context Kimi K2.5 leads

Kimi K2.5: 52.1 (#7), Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
LMArena Longer Query14451330
Fiction.LiveBench86.1%—
CL-bench19.3%—
CL-bench Life13.2%—

Writing & Preference Kimi K2.5 leads

Kimi K2.5: 65.1 (#53), Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5Mercury 2
LMArena Text14451355
LMArena Creative Writing14231289
LMArena Multi-Turn14441358
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1579—

Frequently asked questions

Is Kimi K2.5 better than Mercury 2?

Kimi K2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.1 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 2.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.5 or Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Kimi K2.5 lists at $0.45 and $2.25.

Is Kimi K2.5 or Mercury 2 better for coding?

Kimi K2.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.8 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Kimi K2.5 does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Kimi K2.5 and Mercury 2 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2.5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.

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