# Mercury 2 vs Phi-4 Mini

> Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 Mini costs 2.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

## Summary

- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 3 categories and Phi-4 Mini in 0 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mercury 2 leads 36.2 to 25.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 38.7% for Mercury 2 and 10.8% for Phi-4 Mini.
- Phi-4 Mini is cheaper at $0.075 / $0.30 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
- Phi-4 Mini has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 175 | 283 |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.075 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $0.30 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
- Phi-4 Mini: 28.1 (#317)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 38.7% | 10.8% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
- Phi-4 Mini: 22.4 (#195)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.8% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | — |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
- Phi-4 Mini: 25.3 (#262)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | 23.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | — |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Phi-4 Mini?

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 Mini costs 2.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Phi-4 Mini?

Phi-4 Mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.075 per million input tokens and $0.30 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

### Is Mercury 2 or Phi-4 Mini better for coding?

Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 28.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 128K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Phi-4 Mini share?

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