# Mercury 2 vs Qwen Max

> Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-qwen-max
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 6 categories and Qwen Max in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 53.8 to 47.8.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $1.60 / $6.40 for Qwen Max.
- Mercury 2 accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 33K.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 34.7 |
| Rank | 175 | 230 |
| Context | 128K | 33K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $1.60 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $6.40 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
- Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1288 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 21.8% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
- Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1269 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 16.1% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1275 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 67.2% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1% |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
- Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1248 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
- Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1263 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1254 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1274 |
| LMArena French | — | 1330 |
| LMArena German | — | 1254 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1205 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1142 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1290 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
- Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1262 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
- Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1288 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
- Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1248 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1277 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen Max?

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 34.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen Max?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen Max lists at $1.60 and $6.40.

### Is Mercury 2 or Qwen Max better for coding?

Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 30.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Mercury 2 does, with 128K tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen Max share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Max has 23.