# Grok-3 mini vs Mercury

> Grok-3 mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.2 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/grok-3-mini-vs-mercury
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 9

## Summary

- They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-3 mini scores higher in 5 categories and Mercury in 1 category; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where Grok-3 mini leads 78.5 to 65.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 61.3% for Grok-3 mini and 21.6% for Mercury.

## Snapshot

| | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 41.2 | 37.6 |
| Rank | 141 | 199 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Grok-3 mini: 40.8 (#131)
- Mercury: 38.7 (#170)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1379 | 1322 |
| Aider Polyglot | 49.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 42.6% | — |

## Reasoning

- Grok-3 mini: 13.6 (#334)
- Mercury: 17.5 (#293)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 61.3% | 21.6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1375 | 1285 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0.4% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 16.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 140.35 | — |

## Math

- Grok-3 mini: 42.1 (#85)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 77.8% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 31.8% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1386 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 90.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 5.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok-3 mini: 46.4 (#81)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.9% | — |
| Confabulations | 10.8% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 67.5% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1395 | — |

## Multilingual

- Grok-3 mini: 48.1 (#145)
- Mercury: 41.6 (#206)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1352 | 1260 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1387 | — |
| LMArena French | 1357 | — |
| LMArena German | 1349 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1342 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1335 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1353 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1381 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Grok-3 mini: 78.5 (#9)
- Mercury: 65.2 (#224)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1357 | 1239 |
| IFEval | 95.1% | — |

## Long Context

- Grok-3 mini: 41.0 (#147)
- Mercury: 38.4 (#198)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1372 | 1266 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok-3 mini: 52.5 (#169)
- Mercury: 46.2 (#221)

| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1370 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1342 | 1191 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1355 | 1282 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 73.5% | — |
| WildBench | 65.1% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok-3 mini better than Mercury?

Grok-3 mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.2 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Grok-3 mini or Mercury better for coding?

Grok-3 mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Grok-3 mini and Mercury share?

9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-3 mini has 35 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.