Model comparison
Mercury 2.5 vs Qwen3 8B
Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.5 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2.5 scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3 8B in 1 category; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 8B leads 34.9 to 23.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 38.5% for Mercury 2.5 and 22.6% for Qwen3 8B.
- Mercury 2.5 is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.18 / $0.70 for Qwen3 8B.
- Mercury 2.5 accepts more context: 260K tokens versus 131K.
- Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.5 | 33.7 |
| Released | 2026-09-08 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 260K | 131K |
| Max output | 66K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $0.18 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.70 |
| Results tracked | 4 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Mercury 2.5 leads
Mercury 2.5: 39.5 (#156), Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |
Reasoning Mercury 2.5 leads
Mercury 2.5: 22.4 (#193), Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| DTBench | — | 59.7% |
| LMCA | — | 8.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 136.17 |
Math Qwen3 8B leads
Mercury 2.5: 23.3 (#272), Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 56.1% |
| ProofBench | 3% | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
Long Context Not comparable
Mercury 2.5: —, Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2.5 better than Qwen3 8B?
Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.5 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2.5 or Qwen3 8B?
Mercury 2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen3 8B lists at $0.18 and $0.70.
Is Mercury 2.5 or Qwen3 8B better for coding?
Mercury 2.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.5 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mercury 2.5 does, with 260K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2.5 and Qwen3 8B share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2.5 has 4 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.