Model comparison
Mercury 2 vs Qwen Max
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 6 categories and Qwen Max in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 53.8 to 47.8.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $1.60 / $6.40 for Qwen Max.
- Mercury 2 accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Mercury 2 | Qwen Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 34.7 |
| Released | 2026-02-20 | 2024-04-03 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 33K |
| Max output | 50K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $1.60 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.75 | $6.40 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 23 |
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Category by category
Coding Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255), Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1288 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 21.8% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |
Reasoning Qwen Max leads
Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170), Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1269 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
Math Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 16.1% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1275 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 67.2% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1% |
Knowledge Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172), Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1248 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
Multilingual Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157), Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1263 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1254 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1274 |
| LMArena French | — | 1330 |
| LMArena German | — | 1254 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1205 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1142 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1290 |
Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165), Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1262 |
Long Context Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154), Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1288 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155), Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1248 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1277 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen Max?
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen Max?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen Max lists at $1.60 and $6.40.
Is Mercury 2 or Qwen Max better for coding?
Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 30.7 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 Qwen Max share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Max has 23.