Model comparison
Kimi K2.6 vs Mercury 2
Kimi K2.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.7 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2.6 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 K2.6 leads 54.0 to 36.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 53.5% for Kimi K2.6 and 38.7% for Mercury 2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.95 / $4 for Kimi K2.6.
- Kimi K2.6 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Kimi K2.6 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 47.7 | 39.1 |
| Released | 2026-04-20 | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 128K |
| Max output | 262K | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.95 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $4 | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 50.7 (#43), Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1509 | 1171 |
| SciCode | 53.5% | 38.7% |
| WeirdML | 55.9% | 43.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1488 | 1391 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,093 | 785.58 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 76.7% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Kimi K2.6: 21.9 (#137), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| OSWorld 2.0 | 4.6% | — |
| ExploitBench | 18.4% | — |
| GBAEval | 0.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 12% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,205 | — |
Reasoning Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 40.5 (#55), Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 8% | 0.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1470 | 1362 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 87.2% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 26% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 2.4% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 18% | — |
| DTBench | 90.9% | — |
| LMCA | 37.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 151.05 | — |
Math Not comparable
Kimi K2.6: 57.0 (#41), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 57.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 25.6% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 72.9% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 96.1% | — |
| ProofBench | 16% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1475 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 39% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 14.6% | — |
Knowledge Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 54.0 (#54), Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.8% | 12.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1491 | 1358 |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.8% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 34.9% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Kimi K2.6: 31.6 (#103), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 3.9% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 21.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1451 | — |
Multilingual Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 54.9 (#37), Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1446 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1521 | 1417 |
| LMArena Russian | 1446 | 1304 |
| LMArena French | 1471 | — |
| LMArena German | 1450 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1443 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1427 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | — |
Instruction Following Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 76.3 (#43), Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1451 | 1329 |
Long Context Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 44.9 (#52), Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1468 | 1330 |
Writing & Preference Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 68.5 (#26), Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1455 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1434 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1453 | 1358 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1725 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1202 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimi K2.6 better than Mercury 2?
Kimi K2.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.7 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Kimi K2.6 lists at $0.95 and $4.
Is Kimi K2.6 or Mercury 2 better for coding?
Kimi K2.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.7 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Kimi K2.6 does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Kimi K2.6 and Mercury 2 share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2.6 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.