# Mercury 2 vs Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct

> Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 27.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-phi-3-mini-4k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 7 categories and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 53.8 to 27.6.
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 27.9 |
| Rank | 175 | 328 |
| Context | 128K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.6 (#323)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1093 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 15.5% |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 59.1% |
| MBPP+ | — | 54.2% |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 14.1 (#328)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1072 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 26.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 34.7% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 52.8% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 71.7% |
| HellaSwag | — | 76.7% |
| LiveBench | — | 22.4% |
| WinoGrande | — | 70.8% |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.6 (#257)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | — | 15.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1111 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 28.5 (#246)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1045 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 84.9% |
| MMLU | — | 68.8% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 88% |
| TriviaQA | — | 64% |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.3 (#280)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1021 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1021 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1022 |
| LMArena French | — | 1076 |
| LMArena German | — | 1044 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 935 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 905 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1085 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 47.7 (#303)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1053 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 39.1% |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 31.7 (#276)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1044 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 27.6 (#300)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1073 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1037 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1018 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 9.2% |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct?

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 27.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Mercury 2 or Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct better for coding?

Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 26.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct has 35.