# Mercury 2 vs Qwen3.8 Max

> Qwen3.8 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 56.0 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.8 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-2-vs-qwen3-8-max
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 14

## Summary

- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.8 Max in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.8 Max leads 53.4 to 23.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is CritPt: 0.8% for Mercury 2 and 20% for Qwen3.8 Max.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Qwen3.8 Max.
- Qwen3.8 Max accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 38.8 | 56.0 |
| Rank | 167 | 21 |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $2 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $6 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
- Qwen3.8 Max: 52.3 (#30)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1170 | 1671 |
| SciCode | 38.7% | 52.9% |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1499 |
| DeepSWE | — | 57.5% |
| FrontierSWE | — | 15.8% |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.8 Max: 42.6 (#17)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 55.1% |
| GDP.pdf | — | 23.2% |

## Reasoning

- Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
- Qwen3.8 Max: 53.4 (#26)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.8% | 20% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1493 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 88.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 40% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 38% |
| DTBench | — | 92% |
| LMCA | — | 46.2% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 156.69 |

## Math

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.8 Max: 73.1 (#15)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 74.7% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 46.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 100% |
| ProofBench | — | 58% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1498 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
- Qwen3.8 Max: 61.7 (#25)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1504 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 92.7% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 47.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |

## Multimodal

- Mercury 2: —
- Qwen3.8 Max: 36.9 (#70)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1314 |
| Furniture Assembly | — | 20% |

## Multilingual

- Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
- Qwen3.8 Max: 56.6 (#18)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1468 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1416 | 1537 |
| LMArena Russian | 1303 | 1478 |
| LMArena French | — | 1502 |
| LMArena German | — | 1489 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1466 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1467 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1495 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
- Qwen3.8 Max: 77.7 (#19)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1478 |

## Long Context

- Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
- Qwen3.8 Max: 45.5 (#30)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1329 | 1486 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
- Qwen3.8 Max: 67.0 (#31)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1480 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1478 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1487 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3.8 Max?

Qwen3.8 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 56.0 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.8 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3.8 Max?

Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3.8 Max lists at $2 and $6.

### Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3.8 Max better for coding?

Qwen3.8 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 52.3 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.8 Max does, with 1M tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3.8 Max share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.8 Max has 38.