# Mercury 2 vs MiniMax M1

> Mercury 2 and MiniMax M1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.8 vs 39.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-minimax-m1
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 3 categories and MiniMax M1 in 4 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where MiniMax M1 leads 39.2 to 33.2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $2.20 for MiniMax M1.
- MiniMax M1 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- MiniMax M1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 38.8 | 39.7 |
| Rank | 167 | 146 |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $2.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
- MiniMax M1: 39.2 (#149)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1359 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1170 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
- MiniMax M1: 25.8 (#125)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1340 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- MiniMax M1: 34.8 (#152)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1360 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
- MiniMax M1: 35.7 (#168)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1316 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
- MiniMax M1: 46.0 (#157)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1320 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1416 | 1361 |
| LMArena Russian | 1303 | 1330 |
| LMArena French | — | 1369 |
| LMArena German | — | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1220 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1263 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1354 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
- MiniMax M1: 69.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1312 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
- MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#136)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1329 | 1326 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 69.4% |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
- MiniMax M1: 53.3 (#155)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1343 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1298 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1335 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than MiniMax M1?

Mercury 2 and MiniMax M1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.8 vs 39.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or MiniMax M1?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; MiniMax M1 lists at $0.40 and $2.20.

### Is Mercury 2 or MiniMax M1 better for coding?

MiniMax M1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.2 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax M1 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and MiniMax M1 share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax M1 has 18.