Model comparison
Claude Opus 5 vs Mercury 2
Claude Opus 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 67.7 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5 scores higher in 7 categories and Mercury 2 in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 5 leads 77.1 to 23.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 91.8% for Claude Opus 5 and 43.2% for Mercury 2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 5.
- Claude Opus 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 67.7 | 38.8 |
| Released | 2026-07-24 | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 128K |
| Max output | 128K | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 67.0 (#5), Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1694 | 1170 |
| SciCode | 56.4% | 38.7% |
| WeirdML | 91.8% | 43.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1533 | 1391 |
| ALE-Bench | 2,165 | 785.58 |
| DeepSWE | 73.6% | — |
| FrontierCode | 53.4% | — |
| CursorBench | 46.6% | — |
| FrontierSWE | 52% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Opus 5: 55.5 (#1), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 65.8% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 31.4% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 48.7% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 35% | — |
| BALROG | 63.4% | — |
| GBAEval | 79.6% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 11,182 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 77.1 (#3), Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 29.1% | 0.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1525 | 1362 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 90.4% | — |
| SimpleBench | 80.6% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 94.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 97.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 42% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 45.7% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 59% | — |
| DTBench | 97.9% | — |
| LMCA | 64.5% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.12 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 162.67 | — |
Math Not comparable
Claude Opus 5: 86.1 (#6), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 85.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 73.2% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.9% | — |
| ProofBench | 99% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1533 | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 66.8 (#8), Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1558 | 1358 |
| GPQA Diamond | 93.9% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 59.9% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.3% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 5: 51.1 (#6), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1321 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 30.4% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 60.8% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1516 | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 58.8 (#3), Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1500 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1575 | 1416 |
| LMArena Russian | 1507 | 1303 |
| LMArena French | 1522 | — |
| LMArena German | 1522 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1510 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1526 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1519 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 79.3 (#5), Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1516 | 1328 |
Long Context Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 46.5 (#20), Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1516 | 1329 |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 5 leads
Claude Opus 5: 79.3 (#2), Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1506 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1491 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1496 | 1358 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2133 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1385 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 5 better than Mercury 2?
Claude Opus 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 67.7 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 or Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 5 or Mercury 2 better for coding?
Claude Opus 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 67.0 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Opus 5 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5 and Mercury 2 share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.