# Mercury vs Step 5 Preview

> Step 5 Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.9 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mercury-vs-step-5-preview
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 8

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury scores higher in 0 categories and Step 5 Preview in 6 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Step 5 Preview leads 40.0 to 17.5.

## Snapshot

| | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 37.6 | 47.9 |
| Rank | 199 | 58 |
| Context | — | 1.02M |
| Input $/M | — | $1 |
| Output $/M | — | $2.70 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mercury: 38.7 (#170)
- Step 5 Preview: 51.8 (#36)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1322 | 1480 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1564 |
| SciCode | — | 58.9% |

## Reasoning

- Mercury: 17.5 (#293)
- Step 5 Preview: 40.0 (#57)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1285 | 1465 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 21.6% | — |
| CritPt | — | 20.9% |

## Math

- Mercury: —
- Step 5 Preview: 46.1 (#72)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | — | 42% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1470 |

## Knowledge

- Mercury: —
- Step 5 Preview: 41.2 (#112)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1470 |

## Multimodal

- Mercury: —
- Step 5 Preview: 41.0 (#41)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1267 |

## Multilingual

- Mercury: 41.6 (#206)
- Step 5 Preview: 53.8 (#54)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1260 | 1432 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1519 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1436 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1439 |

## Instruction Following

- Mercury: 65.2 (#224)
- Step 5 Preview: 76.0 (#50)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1239 | 1444 |

## Long Context

- Mercury: 38.4 (#198)
- Step 5 Preview: 44.5 (#64)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1266 | 1455 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mercury: 46.2 (#221)
- Step 5 Preview: 62.8 (#71)

| Benchmark | Mercury | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1282 | 1442 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1191 | 1410 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1282 | 1447 |

## FAQ

### Is Mercury better than Step 5 Preview?

Step 5 Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.9 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Mercury or Step 5 Preview better for coding?

Step 5 Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 51.8 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Mercury and Step 5 Preview share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury has 9 scored results on Noometry and Step 5 Preview has 18.