Model comparison
Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen Plus
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 8.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen Plus leads 28.4 to 22.4.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 260K.
Side by side
| Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.5 | 37.1 |
| Released | 2026-09-08 | 2024-01-25 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 260K | 1M |
| Max output | 66K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $0.40 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 4 | 20 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156), Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 38.5% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1328 |
| ALE-Bench | 301.65 | — |
Reasoning Qwen Plus leads
Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193), Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 63.3% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1317 |
| DTBench | — | 81.1% |
| LMCA | — | 24% |
Math Too close to call
Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272), Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 17.8% |
| ProofBench | 3% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1326 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 65.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 48.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1328 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1323 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1303 |
Long Context Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1324 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1293 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1336 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2.5 better than Qwen Plus?
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 8.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2.5 or Qwen Plus?
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.
Is Mercury 2.5 or Qwen Plus better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (39.5 vs 38.9); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 260K.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2.5 and Qwen Plus share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2.5 has 4 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.