Model comparison

Mercury 2 vs Qwen2-72B

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 30.0 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.

Mercury 2 Inception

39.1

Rank #175 Confirmed

Qwen2-72B Alibaba (Qwen)

30.0

Rank #300 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 7 categories and Qwen2-72B in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mercury 2 leads 36.2 to 21.2.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 43.2% for Mercury 2 and 11.3% for Qwen2-72B.
  • Qwen2-72B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Mercury 2 and Qwen2-72B specifications
Mercury 2Qwen2-72B
ProviderInceptionAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index39.130.0
Released2026-02-202024-06-07
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window128K—
Max output50K—
Input $ / M tokens$0.25—
Output $ / M tokens$0.75—
Results tracked1726

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Category by category

Coding Mercury 2 leads

Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255), Qwen2-72B: 29.1 (#310)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
WeirdML43.2%11.3%
LMArena Coding13911196
LMArena WebDev1171—
SciCode38.7%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—38.5%
BigCodeBench Complete—54%
ALE-Bench785.58—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen2-72B: 17.0 (#146)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
TheAgentCompany—1.1%
METR Time Horizons—29.9%

Reasoning Too close to call

Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170), Qwen2-72B: 23.2 (#181)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
LMArena Hard Prompts13621191
CritPt0.8%—
Epoch Capabilities Index—125.28

Math Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen2-72B: 30.2 (#236)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
LMArena Math—1235
MATH Level 5—39.1%

Knowledge Mercury 2 leads

Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172), Qwen2-72B: 21.2 (#275)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
LMArena Expert13581171
GPQA Diamond—40.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.3%—
MMLU—82.4%

Multilingual Mercury 2 leads

Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157), Qwen2-72B: 35.9 (#244)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
LMArena Non-English13311176
LMArena Chinese14171240
LMArena Russian13041169
LMArena French—1170
LMArena German—1151
LMArena Japanese—1111
LMArena Korean—1083
LMArena Spanish—1169

Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads

Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165), Qwen2-72B: 61.7 (#241)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
LMArena Instruction Following13291181

Long Context Mercury 2 leads

Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154), Qwen2-72B: 36.1 (#235)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
LMArena Longer Query13301192

Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads

Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155), Qwen2-72B: 40.8 (#241)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen2-72B
LMArena Text13551203
LMArena Creative Writing12891181
LMArena Multi-Turn13581196

Frequently asked questions

Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen2-72B?

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 30.0 on the Noometry Index.

Is Mercury 2 or Qwen2-72B better for coding?

Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 29.1 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen2-72B share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2-72B has 26.

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