# Llama 3.1-70B vs Mercury

> Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 29.6 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-1-70b-vs-mercury
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 8

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.1-70B scores higher in 2 categories and Mercury in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury leads 46.2 to 35.4.
- Llama 3.1-70B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 29.6 | 37.6 |
| Rank | 308 | 199 |
| Context | 128K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.40 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.40 | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Llama 3.1-70B: 30.3 (#296)
- Mercury: 38.7 (#170)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1260 | 1322 |
| WeirdML | 9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 46.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 54.8% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Llama 3.1-70B: 25.1 (#112)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | 6.9% | — |
| BALROG | 27.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3.1-70B: 21.6 (#220)
- Mercury: 17.5 (#293)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1241 | 1285 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |
| DTBench | 60% | — |
| LMCA | 14.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 125.92 | — |

## Math

- Llama 3.1-70B: 13.5 (#304)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 3.6% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 21% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1252 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 36.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3.1-70B: 24.2 (#269)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 44.2% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 65.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 42.6% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1209 | — |
| MMLU | 80.1% | — |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3.1-70B: 38.8 (#225)
- Mercury: 41.6 (#206)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1219 | 1260 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1215 | — |
| LMArena French | 1261 | — |
| LMArena German | 1222 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1132 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1140 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1253 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3.1-70B: 65.3 (#223)
- Mercury: 65.2 (#224)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1231 | 1239 |
| IFEval | 82.1% | — |

## Long Context

- Llama 3.1-70B: 37.6 (#214)
- Mercury: 38.4 (#198)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1241 | 1266 |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3.1-70B: 35.4 (#267)
- Mercury: 46.2 (#221)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-70B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1261 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1232 | 1191 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1256 | 1282 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 784 | — |
| WildBench | 75.8% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3.1-70B better than Mercury?

Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 29.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Llama 3.1-70B or Mercury better for coding?

Mercury scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.7 versus 30.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3.1-70B and Mercury share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.1-70B has 35 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.