Model comparison
Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.1 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 44× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 1 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Mercury 2.5 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 37.6 to 23.3.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 260K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.5 | 38.1 |
| Released | 2026-09-08 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 260K | 262K |
| Max output | 66K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 4 | 25 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Mercury 2.5 leads
Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 35.5 (#223)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 301.65 | 461.45 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| SciCode | 38.5% | — |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1412 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.9 (#123)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
Reasoning Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 25.5 (#149)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1372 |
Math Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | 3% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1365 |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.0 (#162)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1338 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.7 (#148)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1346 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1357 |
| LMArena French | — | 1398 |
| LMArena German | — | 1325 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1305 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1366 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1360 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.6 (#147)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1355 |
Long Context Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#131)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1378 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.3 (#147)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1357 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1365 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2.5 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.1 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 44× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2.5 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Mercury 2.5 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?
Mercury 2.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.5 versus 35.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 260K.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?
1 benchmark has published results for both models. Mercury 2.5 has 4 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.