Model comparison

Mercury vs MiniMax-M3

MiniMax-M3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.8 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.

Mercury Inception

37.6

Rank #199 Confirmed

MiniMax-M3 MiniMax

43.8

Rank #85 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury scores higher in 0 categories and MiniMax-M3 in 6 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where MiniMax-M3 leads 62.1 to 46.2.
  • MiniMax-M3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Mercury and MiniMax-M3 specifications
MercuryMiniMax-M3
ProviderInceptionMiniMax
Noometry Index37.643.8
Released—2026-06-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window—1M
Max output—512K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.30
Output $ / M tokens—$1.20
Results tracked941

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Category by category

Coding MiniMax-M3 leads

Mercury: 38.7 (#170), MiniMax-M3: 41.8 (#118)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
LMArena Coding13221469
FrontierCode—14.7%
LMArena WebDev—1482
SciCode—47.1%
ALE-Bench—640.02

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mercury: —, MiniMax-M3: 22.6 (#130)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
APEX-Agents—37.7%
OSWorld 2.0—4.6%
GBAEval—0.9%
Vending-Bench 2—2,158

Reasoning MiniMax-M3 leads

Mercury: 17.5 (#293), MiniMax-M3: 30.1 (#87)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
LMArena Hard Prompts12851447
SimpleBench—45.8%
Kagi LLM Benchmark21.6%—
NYT Connections (extended)—65.1%
CritPt—3.7%
Chess Puzzles—14%
Mystery Game Puzzles—8%
DTBench—78.9%
LMCA—33.7%
Surface Evolver Bench—55%
Epoch Capabilities Index—146.95
ForecastBench—61.4

Math Not comparable

Mercury: —, MiniMax-M3: 40.0 (#95)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—71.1%
ProofBench—18%
LMArena Math—1429

Knowledge Not comparable

Mercury: —, MiniMax-M3: 58.4 (#35)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
GPQA Diamond—90.9%
LMArena Expert—1461

Multimodal Not comparable

Mercury: —, MiniMax-M3: 40.2 (#51)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
LMArena Vision—1253
LMArena Document—1435

Multilingual MiniMax-M3 leads

Mercury: 41.6 (#206), MiniMax-M3: 53.0 (#75)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
LMArena Non-English12601420
LMArena Chinese—1463
LMArena French—1447
LMArena German—1426
LMArena Japanese—1381
LMArena Korean—1372
LMArena Russian—1428
LMArena Spanish—1432

Instruction Following MiniMax-M3 leads

Mercury: 65.2 (#224), MiniMax-M3: 75.5 (#62)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
LMArena Instruction Following12391433

Long Context MiniMax-M3 leads

Mercury: 38.4 (#198), MiniMax-M3: 44.2 (#72)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
LMArena Longer Query12661445

Writing & Preference MiniMax-M3 leads

Mercury: 46.2 (#221), MiniMax-M3: 62.1 (#83)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkMercuryMiniMax-M3
LMArena Text12821433
LMArena Creative Writing11911404
LMArena Multi-Turn12821442
EQ-Bench 4—1150

Frequently asked questions

Is Mercury better than MiniMax-M3?

MiniMax-M3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.8 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.

Is Mercury or MiniMax-M3 better for coding?

MiniMax-M3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.8 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Mercury and MiniMax-M3 share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury has 9 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M3 has 41.

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