# Magistral Small vs Mercury 2.5

> Mercury 2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/magistral-small-vs-mercury-2-5
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 1 category and Mercury 2.5 in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Mercury 2.5 leads 22.4 to 6.8.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for Magistral Small.
- Mercury 2.5 accepts more context: 260K tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 33.5 |
| Rank | 296 | 242 |
| Context | 128K | 260K |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $0.04 |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176)
- Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | 38.5% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 301.65 |

## Reasoning

- Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350)
- Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| DTBench | 61.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |

## Math

- Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261)
- Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | — |
| ProofBench | — | 3% |

## Knowledge

- Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223)
- Mercury 2.5: —

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Magistral Small better than Mercury 2.5?

Mercury 2.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Mercury 2.5?

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Magistral Small lists at $0.50 and $1.50.

### Is Magistral Small or Mercury 2.5 better for coding?

Mercury 2.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.5 versus 38.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Mercury 2.5 does, with 260K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Mercury 2.5 share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2.5 has 4.