# Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.6 Plus

> Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.3 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-qwen3-6-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Plus in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 Plus leads 56.1 to 35.6.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Qwen3.6 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 38.8 | 47.3 |
| Rank | 167 | 54 |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.50 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $3 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 40.6 (#125)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1170 | 1461 |
| SciCode | 38.7% | 40.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1467 |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | 670.15 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 57.9% |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 5,115 |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 28.5 (#89)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.8% | 2.9% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1449 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 59.5% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 12% |
| DTBench | — | 81.9% |
| LMCA | — | 33.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147.67 |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 50.6 (#44)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 38.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 93.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1450 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 26.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 8.3% |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 56.1 (#40)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1456 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 88.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 44.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 53.5 (#66)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1424 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1416 | 1478 |
| LMArena Russian | 1303 | 1434 |
| LMArena French | — | 1454 |
| LMArena German | — | 1451 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1381 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1432 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 75.2 (#70)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1425 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 45.1 (#48)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1329 | 1440 |
| CL-bench | — | 20.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 62.4 (#78)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1437 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1405 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1438 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3.6 Plus?

Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.3 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus lists at $0.50 and $3.

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

Qwen3.6 Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.6 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.6 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 128K.

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

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Plus has 37.