Model comparison

Mercury 2 vs Qwen3 Max

Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 6.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 12 shared benchmarks.

Mercury 2 Inception

38.8

Rank #167 Confirmed

Qwen3 Max

Alibaba (Qwen)

43.5

Rank #82 Confirmed

Summary

They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3 Max in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3 Max leads 48.1 to 35.6.
Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $1.20 / $6 for Qwen3 Max.
Qwen3 Max accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Mercury 2 and Qwen3 Max specifications
	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
Provider	Inception	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	38.8	43.5
Released	2026-02-20	2025-09-23
Weights	Proprietary	Proprietary
Context window	128K	262K
Max output	50K	66K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.25	$1.20
Output $ / M tokens	$0.75	$6
Results tracked	17	33

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3 Max leads

Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250), Qwen3 Max: 42.4 (#93)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Coding	1391	1456
ALE-Bench	785.58	370.45
LMArena WebDev	1170	—
SciCode	38.7%	—
WeirdML	43.2%	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen3 Max: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
Vending-Bench 2	—	71.56

Reasoning Mercury 2 leads

Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170), Qwen3 Max: 22.0 (#186)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Hard Prompts	1362	1448
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	72.5%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	30.1%
CritPt	0.8%	—
Chess Puzzles	—	4%
Mystery Game Puzzles	—	5%
DTBench	—	82.1%
LMCA	—	28.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	142.41

Math Not comparable

Mercury 2: —, Qwen3 Max: 37.6 (#94)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	—	18.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	73.3%
LMArena Math	—	1447
MATH Level 5	—	97.1%

Knowledge Qwen3 Max leads

Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170), Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#72)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Expert	1358	1457
GPQA Diamond	—	72.6%
SimpleQA Verified	—	48.7%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	12.3%	—

Multilingual Qwen3 Max leads

Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153), Qwen3 Max: 53.9 (#58)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Non-English	1331	1429
LMArena Chinese	1416	1479
LMArena Russian	1303	1428
LMArena French	—	1450
LMArena German	—	1463
LMArena Japanese	—	1399
LMArena Korean	—	1397
LMArena Spanish	—	1463

Instruction Following Qwen3 Max leads

Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161), Qwen3 Max: 75.0 (#81)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Instruction Following	1328	1420

Long Context Qwen3 Max leads

Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149), Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#129)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Longer Query	1329	1439
Fiction.LiveBench	—	66.7%
CL-bench	—	14.5%

Writing & Preference Qwen3 Max leads

Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151), Qwen3 Max: 62.6 (#72)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Mercury 2	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Text	1355	1439
LMArena Creative Writing	1289	1401
LMArena Multi-Turn	1358	1446

Frequently asked questions

Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3 Max?

Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3 Max?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3 Max lists at $1.20 and $6.

Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3 Max better for coding?

Qwen3 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3 Max does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3 Max share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.