Model comparison

Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3 Max

Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.7 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 36× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 1 shared benchmarks.

Mercury 2.5 Inception

33.5

Rank #242 Reported

Qwen3 Max

Alibaba (Qwen)

43.7

Rank #87 Confirmed

Summary

They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Mercury 2.5 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 Max in 3 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 Max leads 38.7 to 23.3.
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.20 / $6 for Qwen3 Max.
Qwen3 Max accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 260K.

Side by side

Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3 Max specifications
	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
Provider	Inception	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	33.5	43.7
Released	2026-09-08	2025-09-23
Weights	Proprietary	Proprietary
Context window	260K	262K
Max output	66K	66K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.04	$1.20
Output $ / M tokens	$0.15	$6
Results tracked	4	33

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3 Max leads

Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156), Qwen3 Max: 43.0 (#93)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
ALE-Bench	301.65	370.45
SciCode	38.5%	—
LMArena Coding	—	1456

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 Max: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
Vending-Bench 2	—	71.56

Reasoning Too close to call

Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193), Qwen3 Max: 22.6 (#190)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	72.5%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	30.1%
CritPt	0%	—
Chess Puzzles	—	4%
LMArena Hard Prompts	—	1448
Mystery Game Puzzles	—	5%
DTBench	—	82.1%
LMCA	—	28.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	142.38

Math Qwen3 Max leads

Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272), Qwen3 Max: 38.7 (#131)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	—	18.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	73.3%
ProofBench	3%	—
LMArena Math	—	1446
MATH Level 5	—	97.1%

Knowledge Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#78)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
GPQA Diamond	—	72.6%
SimpleQA Verified	—	48.7%
LMArena Expert	—	1455

Multilingual Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 Max: 53.7 (#62)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Non-English	—	1429
LMArena Chinese	—	1478
LMArena French	—	1449
LMArena German	—	1463
LMArena Japanese	—	1397
LMArena Korean	—	1399
LMArena Russian	—	1428
LMArena Spanish	—	1462

Instruction Following Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 Max: 74.8 (#87)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Instruction Following	—	1419

Long Context Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#134)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
Fiction.LiveBench	—	66.7%
CL-bench	—	14.5%
LMArena Longer Query	—	1438

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 Max: 62.4 (#76)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2.5	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Text	—	1439
LMArena Creative Writing	—	1402
LMArena Multi-Turn	—	1446

Frequently asked questions

Is Mercury 2.5 better than Qwen3 Max?

Which is cheaper, Mercury 2.5 or Qwen3 Max?

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen3 Max lists at $1.20 and $6.

Is Mercury 2.5 or Qwen3 Max better for coding?

Qwen3 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.0 versus 39.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3 Max does, with 262K tokens against 260K.

How many benchmarks do Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3 Max share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Mercury 2.5 has 4 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.