Model comparison
Magistral Medium vs Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Medium scores higher in 1 category and Mercury 2 in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Mercury 2 leads 23.8 to 8.6.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.
- Magistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Medium has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 35.2 | 39.1 |
| Released | 2025-03-17 | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 128K |
| Max output | 16K | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 22 | 17 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Magistral Medium leads
Magistral Medium: 39.1 (#161), Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 39.2% | 38.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1319 | 1391 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1171 |
| WeirdML | — | 43.2% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 785.58 |
Reasoning Mercury 2 leads
Magistral Medium: 8.6 (#348), Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | 1362 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 16.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 6.1% | — |
Math Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 35.1 (#189), Mercury 2: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1250 | — |
Knowledge Mercury 2 leads
Magistral Medium: 33.5 (#202), Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1223 | 1358 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.3% |
Multilingual Mercury 2 leads
Magistral Medium: 39.6 (#224), Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1232 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1227 | 1417 |
| LMArena Russian | 1224 | 1304 |
| LMArena French | 1267 | — |
| LMArena German | 1248 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1175 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1125 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1271 | — |
Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads
Magistral Medium: 66.0 (#211), Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | 1329 |
Long Context Mercury 2 leads
Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#183), Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1295 | 1330 |
Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads
Magistral Medium: 46.3 (#219), Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1255 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1245 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | 1358 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Medium better than Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Medium or Mercury 2?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.
Is Magistral Medium or Mercury 2 better for coding?
Magistral Medium scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.1 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Magistral Medium does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Medium and Mercury 2 share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Medium has 22 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.