# Mercury 2 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

> Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.1 vs 40.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 4 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 3 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 40.4 to 33.5.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 40.0 |
| Rank | 175 | 155 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $0.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1375 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1337 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1359 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1356 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1295 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1359 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1253 |
| LMArena French | — | 1366 |
| LMArena German | — | 1282 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1206 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1238 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1345 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1318 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1314 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1327 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1254 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1328 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1280 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.1 vs 40.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

### Is Mercury 2 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.