Model comparison
Granite 4.2 8B vs Mercury 2.5
Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Granite 4.2 8B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 26.6 to 22.4.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.06 / $0.25 for Granite 4.2 8B.
- Mercury 2.5 accepts more context: 260K tokens versus 131K.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 33.5 |
| Released | — | 2026-09-08 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | 260K |
| Max output | 118K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.06 | $0.04 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 11 | 4 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 8B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137), Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 38.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 301.65 |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131), Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | — |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 8B: —, Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | — | 3% |
Knowledge Not comparable
Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189), Mercury 2.5: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Mercury 2.5?
Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2.5 costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Granite 4.2 8B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Mercury 2.5?
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Granite 4.2 8B lists at $0.06 and $0.25.
Is Granite 4.2 8B or Mercury 2.5 better for coding?
Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 39.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mercury 2.5 does, with 260K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Mercury 2.5 share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2.5 has 4.