# Mercury 2 vs Qwen2-72B

> Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 30.0 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-qwen2-72b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 7 categories and Qwen2-72B in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mercury 2 leads 36.2 to 21.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 43.2% for Mercury 2 and 11.3% for Qwen2-72B.
- Qwen2-72B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 30.0 |
| Rank | 175 | 300 |
| Context | 128K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
- Qwen2-72B: 29.1 (#310)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 43.2% | 11.3% |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1196 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 38.5% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 54% |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen2-72B: 17.0 (#146)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | — | 1.1% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 29.9% |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
- Qwen2-72B: 23.2 (#181)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1191 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 125.28 |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen2-72B: 30.2 (#236)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1235 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 39.1% |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
- Qwen2-72B: 21.2 (#275)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1171 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 40.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
| MMLU | — | 82.4% |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
- Qwen2-72B: 35.9 (#244)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1176 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1240 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1169 |
| LMArena French | — | 1170 |
| LMArena German | — | 1151 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1083 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1169 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
- Qwen2-72B: 61.7 (#241)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1181 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
- Qwen2-72B: 36.1 (#235)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1192 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
- Qwen2-72B: 40.8 (#241)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen2-72B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1203 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1181 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1196 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen2-72B?

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 30.0 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Mercury 2 or Qwen2-72B better for coding?

Mercury 2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 29.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen2-72B share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2-72B has 26.