# Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.6 27B

> Qwen3.6 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.2 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 3.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-qwen3-6-27b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.6 27B in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 27B leads 52.4 to 36.2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.60 / $3.60 for Qwen3.6 27B.
- Qwen3.6 27B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Qwen3.6 27B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 42.2 |
| Rank | 175 | 117 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.60 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $3.60 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
- Qwen3.6 27B: 39.1 (#163)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 38.7% | 37.3% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
- Qwen3.6 27B: 25.0 (#153)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.8% | 0.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 22% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 78.1% |
| LMCA | — | 34.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 146.5 |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.6 27B: 48.5 (#62)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 35.1% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 91.1% |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
- Qwen3.6 27B: 52.4 (#63)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 85.9% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
- Qwen3.6 27B: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
- Qwen3.6 27B: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | — |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
- Qwen3.6 27B: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
- Qwen3.6 27B: 50.3 (#181)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | — | 1026 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3.6 27B?

Qwen3.6 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.2 to 39.1 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 3.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3.6 27B?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 27B lists at $0.60 and $3.60.

### Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3.6 27B better for coding?

Qwen3.6 27B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.1 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.6 27B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3.6 27B share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 27B has 11.