Model comparison
Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 7.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Max Preview in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 57.6 to 36.2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $1.30 / $7.80 for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 51.5 |
| Released | 2026-02-20 | 2026-04-20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 262K |
| Max output | 50K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $1.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.75 | $7.80 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 29 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.7 (#54)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | 1482 |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1471 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 76.7% |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 4,254 |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 41.7 (#53)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1457 |
| SimpleBench | — | 63% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 74.1% |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 20% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| DTBench | — | 87.2% |
| LMCA | — | 42.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 149.24 |
Math Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.1 (#46)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 91.1% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1465 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 23.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#39)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1478 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 87.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 52% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
Multilingual Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.2 (#48)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1437 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1487 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1445 |
| LMArena French | — | 1449 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1454 |
Instruction Following Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.7 (#55)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1438 |
Long Context Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#61)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1457 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 63.8 (#60)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1447 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1456 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3.6 Max Preview?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 7.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3.6 Max Preview?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Max Preview lists at $1.30 and $7.80.
Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3.6 Max Preview better for coding?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.7 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3.6 Max Preview share?
12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29.