Model comparison
Inkling vs Mercury 2
Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 6.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Inkling scores higher in 7 categories and Mercury 2 in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Inkling leads 55.2 to 35.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is WeirdML: 32.3% for Inkling and 43.2% for Mercury 2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $1.87 / $4.68 for Inkling.
- Mercury 2 accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 66K.
- Inkling has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Inkling | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Thinking Machines Lab | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 38.8 |
| Released | 2026-07-15 | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 66K | 128K |
| Max output | 66K | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.87 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $4.68 | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 41 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Inkling: 34.1 (#229), Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1412 | 1170 |
| SciCode | 47% | 38.7% |
| WeirdML | 32.3% | 43.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1463 | 1391 |
| ALE-Bench | 946 | 785.58 |
| FrontierCode | 14% | — |
| FrontierSWE | 4.1% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Inkling: 29.5 (#76), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 33.8% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25% | — |
Reasoning Inkling leads
Inkling: 40.6 (#48), Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 5.4% | 0.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1452 | 1362 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 36.5% | — |
| SimpleBench | 50% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 79.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 21% | — |
| DTBench | 87.5% | — |
| LMCA | 37.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.6 | — |
Math Not comparable
Inkling: 31.2 (#198), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 33.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 4.9% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 88.9% | — |
| ProofBench | 0% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1482 | — |
Knowledge Inkling leads
Inkling: 55.2 (#44), Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1468 | 1358 |
| GPQA Diamond | 88.3% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 40.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.3% |
Multilingual Inkling leads
Inkling: 54.2 (#49), Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1434 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1495 | 1416 |
| LMArena Russian | 1430 | 1303 |
| LMArena French | 1453 | — |
| LMArena German | 1456 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1401 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1442 | — |
Instruction Following Inkling leads
Inkling: 75.3 (#65), Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1427 | 1328 |
Long Context Inkling leads
Inkling: 43.9 (#79), Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1436 | 1329 |
Writing & Preference Inkling leads
Inkling: 65.5 (#48), Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
| Benchmark | Inkling | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1390 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1436 | 1358 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1611 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1226 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Inkling better than Mercury 2?
Inkling is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Mercury 2 costs 6.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Inkling's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Inkling or Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Inkling lists at $1.87 and $4.68.
Is Inkling or Mercury 2 better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (34.1 vs 33.2); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mercury 2 does, with 128K tokens against 66K.
How many benchmarks do Inkling and Mercury 2 share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Inkling has 41 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.