Model comparison
Mercury 2 vs Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
MicrosoftSummary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 7 categories and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 53.8 to 31.1.
- Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 29.3 |
| Released | 2026-02-20 | 2024-04-23 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 128K | — |
| Max output | 50K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.25 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.75 | — |
| Results tracked | 17 | 32 |
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Category by category
Coding Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1101 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 20.3% |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |
Reasoning Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1100 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 15.9% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 30.3% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 58.1% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.1% |
| HellaSwag | — | 77% |
| LiveBench | — | 24% |
| WinoGrande | — | 81.5% |
Math Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | — | 17.6% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1151 |
Knowledge Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1067 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 90.7% |
| MMLU | — | 75.7% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 88% |
| TriviaQA | — | 58.1% |
Multilingual Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1058 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1061 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1111 |
| LMArena French | — | 1135 |
| LMArena German | — | 1080 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 966 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 894 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1111 |
Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1087 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 47.2% |
Long Context Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1088 |
Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1110 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1083 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1068 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 12.9% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 better than Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct?
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.
Is Mercury 2 or Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better for coding?
Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32.