Model comparison
Mercury 2 vs MiniMax M1
Mercury 2 and MiniMax M1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.8 vs 39.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
MiniMaxSummary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 3 categories and MiniMax M1 in 4 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where MiniMax M1 leads 39.2 to 33.2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $2.20 for MiniMax M1.
- MiniMax M1 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- MiniMax M1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 38.8 | 39.7 |
| Released | 2026-02-20 | 2025-06-13 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 1M |
| Max output | 50K | 40K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $0.40 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.75 | $2.20 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding MiniMax M1 leads
Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250), MiniMax M1: 39.2 (#149)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1359 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1170 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |
Reasoning MiniMax M1 leads
Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170), MiniMax M1: 25.8 (#125)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1340 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
Math Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, MiniMax M1: 34.8 (#152)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1360 |
Knowledge Too close to call
Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170), MiniMax M1: 35.7 (#168)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1316 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
Multilingual Too close to call
Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153), MiniMax M1: 46.0 (#157)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1320 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1416 | 1361 |
| LMArena Russian | 1303 | 1330 |
| LMArena French | — | 1369 |
| LMArena German | — | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1220 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1263 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1354 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161), MiniMax M1: 69.5 (#169)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1312 |
Long Context Too close to call
Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149), MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#136)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1329 | 1326 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 69.4% |
Writing & Preference Too close to call
Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151), MiniMax M1: 53.3 (#155)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1343 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1298 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1335 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 better than MiniMax M1?
Mercury 2 and MiniMax M1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.8 vs 39.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or MiniMax M1?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; MiniMax M1 lists at $0.40 and $2.20.
Is Mercury 2 or MiniMax M1 better for coding?
MiniMax M1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.2 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
MiniMax M1 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and MiniMax M1 share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax M1 has 18.