# Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.6 Max Preview

> Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.1 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 7.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Max Preview in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 57.6 to 35.6.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $1.30 / $7.80 for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 38.8 | 51.1 |
| Rank | 167 | 36 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $1.30 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $7.80 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.6 (#50)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1170 | 1482 |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1472 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 76.7% |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 4,254 |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 40.8 (#47)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1457 |
| SimpleBench | — | 63% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 74.1% |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 20% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| DTBench | — | 87.2% |
| LMCA | — | 42.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 149.27 |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 52.2 (#40)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 91.1% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1465 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 23.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#35)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1476 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 87.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 52% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.3 (#46)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1436 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1416 | 1487 |
| LMArena Russian | 1303 | 1444 |
| LMArena French | — | 1449 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1452 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.8 (#51)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1437 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#59)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1329 | 1457 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 64.0 (#58)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1447 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1456 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3.6 Max Preview?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.1 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 7.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3.6 Max Preview?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Max Preview lists at $1.30 and $7.80.

### Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3.6 Max Preview better for coding?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.6 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3.6 Max Preview share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29.