# Granite 3.1 2b Instruct vs Mercury

> Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.3 to 32.6 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-1-2b-instruct-vs-mercury
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 8

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 2b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Mercury in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multilingual, where Mercury leads 41.7 to 29.2.
- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 32.6 | 37.3 |
| Rank | 243 | 192 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 32.9 (#255)
- Mercury: 38.1 (#164)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1149 | 1323 |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 21.0 (#206)
- Mercury: 16.8 (#288)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1138 | 1284 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |

## Math

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 30.6 (#206)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1159 | — |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 30.3 (#223)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1131 | — |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 29.2 (#264)
- Mercury: 41.7 (#201)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1068 | 1259 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1138 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1063 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 58.0 (#259)
- Mercury: 65.3 (#220)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1116 | 1238 |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 35.0 (#239)
- Mercury: 38.3 (#193)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1155 | 1264 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 34.3 (#269)
- Mercury: 46.2 (#216)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1127 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1116 | 1186 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1099 | 1283 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.1 2b Instruct better than Mercury?

Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.3 to 32.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 3.1 2b Instruct or Mercury better for coding?

Mercury scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.1 versus 32.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 2b Instruct and Mercury share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 2b Instruct has 12 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.