Model comparison

Mercury 2.5 vs MiniMax-M2.5

MiniMax-M2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.3 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 7.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 2 shared benchmarks.

Mercury 2.5 Inception

33.5

Rank #242 Reported

MiniMax-M2.5

MiniMax

38.3

Rank #188 Confirmed

Summary

They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2.5 scores higher in 1 category and MiniMax-M2.5 in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in coding, where MiniMax-M2.5 leads 48.1 to 39.5.
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.5.
Mercury 2.5 accepts more context: 260K tokens versus 205K.
MiniMax-M2.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Mercury 2.5 and MiniMax-M2.5 specifications
	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
Provider	Inception	MiniMax
Noometry Index	33.5	38.3
Released	2026-09-08	2026-02-12
Weights	Proprietary	Open
Context window	260K	205K
Max output	66K	131K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.04	$0.30
Output $ / M tokens	$0.15	$1.20
Results tracked	4	33

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Category by category

Coding MiniMax-M2.5 leads

Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156), MiniMax-M2.5: 48.1 (#58)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
ALE-Bench	301.65	618.17
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)	—	75.8%
LMArena WebDev	—	1387
SWE-bench Multilingual	—	68.3%
SciCode	38.5%	—
LMArena Coding	—	1381

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, MiniMax-M2.5: 30.4 (#77)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
Terminal-Bench	—	42.7%
Vending-Bench 2	—	-23.16

Reasoning Mercury 2.5 leads

Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193), MiniMax-M2.5: 17.5 (#292)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
ARC-AGI-2	—	4.9%
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	55.2%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	16.8%
ARC-AGI-1	—	63.7%
CritPt	0%	—
LMArena Hard Prompts	—	1372
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	146.68

Math MiniMax-M2.5 leads

Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272), MiniMax-M2.5: 26.9 (#253)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
ProofBench	3%	4%
LMArena Math	—	1378

Knowledge Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, MiniMax-M2.5: 39.2 (#135)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	9.1%
LMArena Expert	—	1379

Multilingual Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, MiniMax-M2.5: 47.1 (#152)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
LMArena Non-English	—	1338
LMArena Chinese	—	1393
LMArena French	—	1362
LMArena German	—	1362
LMArena Japanese	—	1171
LMArena Korean	—	1232
LMArena Russian	—	1358
LMArena Spanish	—	1354

Instruction Following Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, MiniMax-M2.5: 71.5 (#148)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
LMArena Instruction Following	—	1353

Long Context Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, MiniMax-M2.5: 37.5 (#216)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
CL-bench	—	11.4%
CL-bench Life	—	6.3%
LMArena Longer Query	—	1366

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, MiniMax-M2.5: 53.9 (#153)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	MiniMax-M2.5
LMArena Text	—	1359
LMArena Creative Writing	—	1331
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	—	1361
LMArena Multi-Turn	—	1364

Frequently asked questions

Is Mercury 2.5 better than MiniMax-M2.5?

Which is cheaper, Mercury 2.5 or MiniMax-M2.5?

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2.5 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

Is Mercury 2.5 or MiniMax-M2.5 better for coding?

MiniMax-M2.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.1 versus 39.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mercury 2.5 does, with 260K tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks do Mercury 2.5 and MiniMax-M2.5 share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2.5 has 4 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.5 has 33.