# Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.5 27B

> Qwen3.5 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.9 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-qwen3-5-27b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.5 27B in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3.5 27B leads 59.3 to 53.8.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.40 for Qwen3.5 27B.
- Qwen3.5 27B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Qwen3.5 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 41.9 |
| Rank | 175 | 127 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $2.40 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 38.9 (#168)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | 1358 |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | 39.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1427 |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | 349.45 |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.5 27B: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 201.98 |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 27.5 (#117)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1414 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 47.9% |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 45.5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.4% |
| LMCA | — | 34% |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.5 27B: 38.8 (#127)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 56.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1429 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 38.0 (#150)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | 12.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1428 |

## Multimodal

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.5 27B: 39.4 (#59)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1241 |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 50.8 (#115)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1390 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | 1478 |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | 1390 |
| LMArena French | — | 1410 |
| LMArena German | — | 1393 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1345 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1358 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1407 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 73.5 (#119)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1393 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 43.1 (#106)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | 1413 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
- Qwen3.5 27B: 59.3 (#111)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1409 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1362 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1410 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3.5 27B?

Qwen3.5 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.9 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3.5 27B?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 27B lists at $0.30 and $2.40.

### Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3.5 27B better for coding?

Qwen3.5 27B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.9 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 27B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3.5 27B share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 27B has 28.