# Mercury 2 vs MiniMax-M2.1

> Mercury 2 and MiniMax-M2.1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.8 vs 38.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-minimax-m2-1
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 14

## Summary

- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 1 category and MiniMax-M2.1 in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Mercury 2 leads 23.0 to 15.8.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.1.
- MiniMax-M2.1 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 128K.
- MiniMax-M2.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 38.8 | 38.4 |
| Rank | 167 | 177 |
| Context | 128K | 205K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 40.1 (#132)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1170 | 1384 |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1421 |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | 623.83 |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury 2: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 27.7 (#91)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 36.6% |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 15.8 (#301)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1410 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 11.2% |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 35.6 (#142)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1396 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 37.7 (#143)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | 11.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1432 |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 50.2 (#123)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1378 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1416 | 1430 |
| LMArena Russian | 1303 | 1386 |
| LMArena French | — | 1405 |
| LMArena German | — | 1380 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1297 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1396 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 74.0 (#108)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1399 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#98)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1329 | 1416 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 58.5 (#114)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1392 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1362 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1396 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than MiniMax-M2.1?

Mercury 2 and MiniMax-M2.1 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.8 vs 38.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or MiniMax-M2.1?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2.1 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

### Is Mercury 2 or MiniMax-M2.1 better for coding?

MiniMax-M2.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax-M2.1 does, with 205K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and MiniMax-M2.1 share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.1 has 22.