Noometry

Model comparison

Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.5 27B

Qwen3.5 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.4 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 15 shared benchmarks.

Mercury 2 Inception

38.8

Rank #167 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 27B Alibaba (Qwen)

41.4

Rank #127 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.5 27B in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3.5 27B leads 59.5 to 54.0.
  • Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.40 for Qwen3.5 27B.
  • Qwen3.5 27B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
  • Qwen3.5 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Mercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
ProviderInceptionAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index38.841.4
Released2026-02-202026-02-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window128K262K
Max output50K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.25$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$0.75$2.40
Results tracked1728

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3.5 27B leads

Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.6 (#159)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena WebDev11701357
WeirdML43.2%39.5%
LMArena Coding13911427
ALE-Bench785.58349.45
SciCode38.7%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen3.5 27B: —

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
Vending-Bench 2—201.98

Reasoning Qwen3.5 27B leads

Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170), Qwen3.5 27B: 26.6 (#116)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Hard Prompts13621414
NYT Connections (extended)—47.9%
CritPt0.8%—
Thematic Generalization—45.5%
DTBench—82.4%
LMCA—34%

Math Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen3.5 27B: 36.8 (#103)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—56.7%
LMArena Math—1428

Knowledge Qwen3.5 27B leads

Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170), Qwen3.5 27B: 37.4 (#149)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.3%12.1%
LMArena Expert13581428

Multimodal Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen3.5 27B: 38.7 (#56)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Vision—1240

Multilingual Qwen3.5 27B leads

Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153), Qwen3.5 27B: 51.0 (#112)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Non-English13311390
LMArena Chinese14161478
LMArena Russian13031389
LMArena French—1409
LMArena German—1393
LMArena Japanese—1345
LMArena Korean—1359
LMArena Spanish—1408

Instruction Following Qwen3.5 27B leads

Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161), Qwen3.5 27B: 73.7 (#114)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Instruction Following13281393

Long Context Qwen3.5 27B leads

Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149), Qwen3.5 27B: 43.1 (#103)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Longer Query13291413

Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 27B leads

Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151), Qwen3.5 27B: 59.5 (#106)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.5 27B
LMArena Text13551409
LMArena Creative Writing12891362
LMArena Multi-Turn13581410

Frequently asked questions

Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3.5 27B?

Qwen3.5 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.4 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3.5 27B?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 27B lists at $0.30 and $2.40.

Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3.5 27B better for coding?

Qwen3.5 27B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.6 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 27B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3.5 27B share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 27B has 28.

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