# Mercury 2.5 vs MiniMax-M2.1

> MiniMax-M2.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 7.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-5-vs-minimax-m2-1
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 1

## Summary

- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Mercury 2.5 scores higher in 1 category and MiniMax-M2.1 in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where MiniMax-M2.1 leads 38.3 to 23.3.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.1.
- Mercury 2.5 accepts more context: 260K tokens versus 205K.
- MiniMax-M2.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 33.5 | 38.9 |
| Rank | 242 | 178 |
| Context | 260K | 205K |
| Input $/M | $0.04 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 40.4 (#143)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 301.65 | 623.83 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1384 |
| SciCode | 38.5% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1421 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury 2.5: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 27.9 (#98)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 36.6% |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 16.6 (#302)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 11.2% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1411 |

## Math

- Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 38.3 (#138)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | 3% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1397 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2.5: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 38.3 (#147)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 11.8% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1431 |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2.5: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 50.0 (#128)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1378 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1430 |
| LMArena French | — | 1404 |
| LMArena German | — | 1381 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1298 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1387 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1397 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2.5: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 73.8 (#112)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1400 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2.5: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#101)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1416 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2.5: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 58.3 (#120)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1392 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1361 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1396 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2.5 better than MiniMax-M2.1?

MiniMax-M2.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 7.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2.5 or MiniMax-M2.1?

Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2.1 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

### Is Mercury 2.5 or MiniMax-M2.1 better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (39.5 vs 40.4); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Mercury 2.5 does, with 260K tokens against 205K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2.5 and MiniMax-M2.1 share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Mercury 2.5 has 4 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.1 has 22.