Model comparison
Mercury 2 vs Mistral Small 3
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 6.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 6 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 53.8 to 32.2.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
- Mercury 2 accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 31.2 |
| Released | 2026-02-20 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 33K |
| Max output | 50K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.75 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Mistral Small 3 leads
Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255), Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1246 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |
Reasoning Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1233 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 127.07 |
Math Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1240 |
Knowledge Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172), Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1202 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
Multilingual Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157), Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1204 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1216 |
| LMArena French | — | 1203 |
| LMArena German | — | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1214 |
Long Context Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1246 |
Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1195 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 better than Mistral Small 3?
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 6.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.
Is Mercury 2 or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mercury 2 does, with 128K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Mistral Small 3 share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.