Noometry

Model comparison

Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.8 27B

Qwen3.8 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.3 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.8 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.

Mercury 2 Inception

38.8

Rank #167 Confirmed

Qwen3.8 27B Alibaba (Qwen)

45.3

Rank #64 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.8 27B in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in coding, where Qwen3.8 27B leads 50.3 to 33.2.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 38.7% for Mercury 2 and 46.6% for Qwen3.8 27B.
  • Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.99 / $1.49 for Qwen3.8 27B.
  • Qwen3.8 27B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
  • Qwen3.8 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Mercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
ProviderInceptionAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index38.845.3
Released2026-02-202026-08-14
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window128K262K
Max output50K33K
Input $ / M tokens$0.25$0.99
Output $ / M tokens$0.75$1.49
Results tracked1728

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3.8 27B leads

Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250), Qwen3.8 27B: 50.3 (#42)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
LMArena WebDev11701592
SciCode38.7%46.6%
LMArena Coding13911487
WeirdML43.2%—
ALE-Bench785.58—

Reasoning Qwen3.8 27B leads

Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170), Qwen3.8 27B: 31.5 (#71)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
CritPt0.8%5.4%
LMArena Hard Prompts13621459
NYT Connections (extended)—54.5%
DTBench—88%
LMCA—41.4%
Surface Evolver Bench—45%
Epoch Capabilities Index—149.38

Math Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen3.8 27B: 35.7 (#139)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
ProofBench—16%
LMArena Math—1453

Knowledge Qwen3.8 27B leads

Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170), Qwen3.8 27B: 40.9 (#105)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
LMArena Expert13581482
Vectara Hallucination Rate12.3%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen3.8 27B: 40.5 (#36)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
LMArena Vision—1270

Multilingual Qwen3.8 27B leads

Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153), Qwen3.8 27B: 54.0 (#54)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
LMArena Non-English13311431
LMArena Chinese14161504
LMArena Russian13031421
LMArena French—1468
LMArena German—1435
LMArena Japanese—1392
LMArena Korean—1389
LMArena Spanish—1444

Instruction Following Qwen3.8 27B leads

Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161), Qwen3.8 27B: 75.8 (#54)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
LMArena Instruction Following13281436

Long Context Qwen3.8 27B leads

Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149), Qwen3.8 27B: 44.3 (#66)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
LMArena Longer Query13291448

Writing & Preference Qwen3.8 27B leads

Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151), Qwen3.8 27B: 65.9 (#41)

BenchmarkMercury 2Qwen3.8 27B
LMArena Text13551441
LMArena Creative Writing12891382
LMArena Multi-Turn13581443
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—1671

Frequently asked questions

Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3.8 27B?

Qwen3.8 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 45.3 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.8 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3.8 27B?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3.8 27B lists at $0.99 and $1.49.

Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3.8 27B better for coding?

Qwen3.8 27B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.3 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.8 27B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3.8 27B share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.8 27B has 28.

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