Model comparison
Mercury vs Qwen3 Max
Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.7 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 Max in 6 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3 Max leads 62.4 to 46.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 21.6% for Mercury and 72.5% for Qwen3 Max.
Side by side
| Mercury | Qwen3 Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 37.6 | 43.7 |
| Released | — | 2025-09-23 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | 262K |
| Max output | — | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $1.20 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $6 |
| Results tracked | 9 | 33 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3 Max leads
Mercury: 38.7 (#170), Qwen3 Max: 43.0 (#93)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1322 | 1456 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 370.45 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mercury: —, Qwen3 Max: —
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 71.56 |
Reasoning Qwen3 Max leads
Mercury: 17.5 (#293), Qwen3 Max: 22.6 (#190)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 21.6% | 72.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1285 | 1448 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 30.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 4% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.1% |
| LMCA | — | 28.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 142.38 |
Math Not comparable
Mercury: —, Qwen3 Max: 38.7 (#131)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 73.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1446 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.1% |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mercury: —, Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#78)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 72.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 48.7% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1455 |
Multilingual Qwen3 Max leads
Mercury: 41.6 (#206), Qwen3 Max: 53.7 (#62)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1260 | 1429 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1478 |
| LMArena French | — | 1449 |
| LMArena German | — | 1463 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1397 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1399 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1428 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1462 |
Instruction Following Qwen3 Max leads
Mercury: 65.2 (#224), Qwen3 Max: 74.8 (#87)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1239 | 1419 |
Long Context Qwen3 Max leads
Mercury: 38.4 (#198), Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#134)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1266 | 1438 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
| CL-bench | — | 14.5% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3 Max leads
Mercury: 46.2 (#221), Qwen3 Max: 62.4 (#76)
| Benchmark | Mercury | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1282 | 1439 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1191 | 1402 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1282 | 1446 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury better than Qwen3 Max?
Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.7 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Is Mercury or Qwen3 Max better for coding?
Qwen3 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.0 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Mercury and Qwen3 Max share?
9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury has 9 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.