Model comparison
Magistral Medium vs Mercury 2.5
Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.2 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 41× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Medium scores higher in 1 category and Mercury 2.5 in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Mercury 2.5 leads 22.4 to 8.6.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.
- Magistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 260K.
- Magistral Medium has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 35.2 | 33.5 |
| Released | 2025-03-17 | 2026-09-08 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 260K |
| Max output | 16K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.04 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 22 | 4 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Magistral Medium: 39.1 (#161), Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 39.2% | 38.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1319 | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 301.65 |
Reasoning Mercury 2.5 leads
Magistral Medium: 8.6 (#348), Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 16.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 6.1% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | — |
Math Magistral Medium leads
Magistral Medium: 35.1 (#189), Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | — | 3% |
| LMArena Math | 1250 | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 33.5 (#202), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1223 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 39.6 (#224), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1232 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1227 | — |
| LMArena French | 1267 | — |
| LMArena German | 1248 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1175 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1125 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1224 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1271 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 66.0 (#211), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#183), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1295 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 46.3 (#219), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1245 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Medium better than Mercury 2.5?
Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.2 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 41× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Medium or Mercury 2.5?
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.
Is Magistral Medium or Mercury 2.5 better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (39.1 vs 39.5); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Magistral Medium does, with 262K tokens against 260K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Medium and Mercury 2.5 share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Medium has 22 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2.5 has 4.