# Llama 3.2 3B vs Mercury

> Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-2-3b-vs-mercury
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 8

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.2 3B scores higher in 1 category and Mercury in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury leads 46.2 to 24.7.
- Llama 3.2 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 28.9 | 37.6 |
| Rank | 321 | 199 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.33 | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Llama 3.2 3B: 27.6 (#319)
- Mercury: 38.7 (#170)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1098 | 1322 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 23.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 28.3% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#143)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 21.9% | — |
| BALROG | 10.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3.2 3B: 21.0 (#228)
- Mercury: 17.5 (#293)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1095 | 1285 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |

## Math

- Llama 3.2 3B: 32.4 (#214)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1126 | — |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3.2 3B: 29.7 (#235)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1090 | — |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3.2 3B: 26.2 (#281)
- Mercury: 41.6 (#206)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1019 | 1260 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1017 | — |
| LMArena German | 1056 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 949 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3.2 3B: 56.0 (#275)
- Mercury: 65.2 (#224)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1089 | 1239 |

## Long Context

- Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#261)
- Mercury: 38.4 (#198)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1100 | 1266 |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3.2 3B: 24.7 (#307)
- Mercury: 46.2 (#221)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1110 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1094 | 1191 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1105 | 1282 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 595 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3.2 3B better than Mercury?

Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Llama 3.2 3B or Mercury better for coding?

Mercury scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.7 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3.2 3B and Mercury share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.2 3B has 18 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.