Model comparison
Mercury 2 vs Molmo 2 8b
Mercury 2 and Molmo 2 8b score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.1 vs 39.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.
Allen Institute for AI (Ai2)Summary
- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 3 categories and Molmo 2 8b in 1 category; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury 2 leads 53.8 to 49.4.
- Molmo 2 8b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 39.1 |
| Released | 2026-02-20 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 128K | — |
| Max output | 50K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.25 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.75 | — |
| Results tracked | 17 | 5 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Mercury 2: 33.5 (#255), Molmo 2 8b: —
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1171 | — |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | — |
Reasoning Molmo 2 8b leads
Mercury 2: 23.8 (#170), Molmo 2 8b: 25.6 (#146)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1287 |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mercury 2: 36.2 (#172), Molmo 2 8b: —
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, Molmo 2 8b: 30.2 (#112)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1081 |
Multilingual Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 46.6 (#157), Molmo 2 8b: 42.7 (#190)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1276 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1417 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1304 | — |
Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 70.2 (#165), Molmo 2 8b: 67.0 (#201)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1329 | 1270 |
Long Context Not comparable
Mercury 2: 40.5 (#154), Molmo 2 8b: —
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1330 | — |
Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads
Mercury 2: 53.8 (#155), Molmo 2 8b: 49.4 (#191)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Molmo 2 8b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1288 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 better than Molmo 2 8b?
Mercury 2 and Molmo 2 8b score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.1 vs 39.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Molmo 2 8b share?
4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Molmo 2 8b has 5.