# Magistral Small vs Mercury 2

> Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 29.9 on the Noometry Index.

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

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 1 category and Mercury 2 in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Mercury 2 leads 23.0 to 6.9.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for Magistral Small.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 29.9 | 38.8 |
| Rank | 289 | 167 |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $0.25 |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | $0.75 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Magistral Small: 37.8 (#172)
- Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | 38.7% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1170 |
| WeirdML | — | 43.2% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1391 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 785.58 |

## Reasoning

- Magistral Small: 6.9 (#345)
- Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.8% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1362 |
| DTBench | 61.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |

## Math

- Magistral Small: 24.9 (#253)
- Mercury 2: —

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | — |

## Knowledge

- Magistral Small: 30.9 (#215)
- Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.3% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1358 |

## Multilingual

- Magistral Small: —
- Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1416 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1303 |

## Instruction Following

- Magistral Small: —
- Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1328 |

## Long Context

- Magistral Small: —
- Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1329 |

## Writing & Preference

- Magistral Small: —
- Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1358 |

## FAQ

### Is Magistral Small better than Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 29.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Magistral Small lists at $0.50 and $1.50.

### Is Magistral Small or Mercury 2 better for coding?

Magistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.8 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 128K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Mercury 2 share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.