Model comparison
Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.0 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 13× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads 38.8 to 23.3.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $2 for Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct.
- Mercury 2.5 accepts more context: 260K tokens versus 131K.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.5 | 43.0 |
| Released | 2026-09-08 | 2025-09 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 260K | 131K |
| Max output | 66K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $2 |
| Results tracked | 4 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 42.5 (#98)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 38.5% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1440 |
| ALE-Bench | 301.65 | — |
Reasoning Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 31.1 (#81)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 66.7% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1428 |
Math Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 38.8 (#126)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | 3% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1440 |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.8 (#106)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.6% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 9.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 63% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1417 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1407 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1460 |
| LMArena French | — | 1413 |
| LMArena German | — | 1417 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1395 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1364 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1404 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1435 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 70.8 (#159)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | — | 81% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1389 |
Long Context Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#223)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 55.6% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1403 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.0 (#121)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1417 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1334 |
| WildBench | — | 80.7% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1416 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2.5 better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.0 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 13× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2.5 or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct lists at $0.50 and $2.
Is Mercury 2.5 or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.5 versus 39.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mercury 2.5 does, with 260K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2.5 has 4 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.