Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.5 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 2.5 in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Mercury 2.5 leads 22.4 to 6.8.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for Magistral Small.
- Mercury 2.5 accepts more context: 260K tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 33.5 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2026-09-08 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 260K |
| Max output | 40K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.04 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 4 |
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Category by category
Coding Mercury 2.5 leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156)
Reasoning Mercury 2.5 leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| DTBench | 61.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |
Math Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | — |
| ProofBench | — | 3% |
Knowledge Not comparable
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Mercury 2.5?
Mercury 2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small 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 Small lists at $0.50 and $1.50.
Is Magistral Small or Mercury 2.5 better for coding?
Mercury 2.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.5 versus 38.4 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mercury 2.5 does, with 260K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Mercury 2.5 share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2.5 has 4.