# Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Mercury 2

> Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 2.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite-vs-mercury-2
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 16

## Summary

- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher in 7 categories and Mercury 2 in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads 50.0 to 35.6.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 41.8 | 38.8 |
| Rank | 113 | 167 |
| Context | 1.05M | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.25 |
| Output $/M | $2.50 | $0.75 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.1 (#96)
- Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1440 | 1170 |
| SciCode | 41.3% | 38.7% |
| WeirdML | 39% | 43.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1455 | 1391 |
| ALE-Bench | 765.27 | 785.58 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 28.6 (#82)
- Mercury 2: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| GDP.pdf | 10% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#95)
- Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1441 | 1362 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 10.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 60.4% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 53.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 22% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 19% | — |
| DTBench | 83.5% | — |
| LMCA | 37.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.12 | — |

## Math

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#245)
- Mercury 2: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 26% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | — |
| ProofBench | 13% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1431 | — |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.0 (#66)
- Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1430 | 1358 |
| GPQA Diamond | 83.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.3% |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 40.3 (#38)
- Mercury 2: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1266 | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.8 (#59)
- Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1428 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1467 | 1416 |
| LMArena Russian | 1443 | 1303 |
| LMArena French | 1452 | — |
| LMArena German | 1454 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1406 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1440 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 75.0 (#77)
- Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1420 | 1328 |

## Long Context

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.8 (#80)
- Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1435 | 1329 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.4 (#55)
- Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1436 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1419 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1445 | 1358 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1559 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better than Mercury 2?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 2.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Mercury 2 better for coding?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.1 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Mercury 2 share?

16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 38 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.