Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 1 category and Mercury 2 in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Mercury 2 leads 23.8 to 6.8.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for Magistral Small.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 39.1 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 128K |
| Max output | 40K | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | 38.7% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1171 |
| WeirdML | — | 43.2% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1391 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 785.58 |
Reasoning Mercury 2 leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.8% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1362 |
| DTBench | 61.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |
Math Not comparable
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | — |
Knowledge Mercury 2 leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.3% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1358 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1417 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1304 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1329 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1330 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1358 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Magistral Small lists at $0.50 and $1.50.
Is Magistral Small or Mercury 2 better for coding?
Magistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.4 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 128K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Mercury 2 share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.