# Mercury 2 vs Phi-4

> Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 costs 4.3× 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
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 6 categories and Phi-4 in 1 category; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 54.0 to 40.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Vectara Hallucination Rate: 12.3% for Mercury 2 and 3.7% for Phi-4.
- Phi-4 is cheaper at $0.07 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
- Phi-4 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 38.8 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 167 | 269 |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.07 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $0.14 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
- Phi-4: 33.8 (#237)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1231 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1170 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.5% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 30.7% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 55.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury 2: —
- Phi-4: 22.6 (#120)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 28.8% |
| BALROG | — | 11.6% |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
- Phi-4: 17.0 (#287)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1220 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 1% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 47.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 45.2% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 130.43 |
| LiveBench | — | 41.6% |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Phi-4: 19.6 (#279)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 13.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 42% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1246 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 64.9% |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
- Phi-4: 32.5 (#204)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | 3.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1203 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 29.4% |
| MMLU | — | 84.8% |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
- Phi-4: 37.4 (#232)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1197 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1416 | 1211 |
| LMArena Russian | 1303 | 1209 |
| LMArena French | — | 1223 |
| LMArena German | — | 1222 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1158 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1151 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1234 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
- Phi-4: 60.6 (#246)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1201 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 58.4% |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
- Phi-4: 36.9 (#221)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1329 | 1217 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
- Phi-4: 40.7 (#239)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1217 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1182 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1206 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 62.6% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 25.6% |

## FAQ

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

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 costs 4.3× 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?

Phi-4 is cheaper. It lists at $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

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

They score almost the same on coding (33.2 vs 33.8); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 128K tokens.

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

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Phi-4 has 37.