Model comparison
Mercury 2 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 37.7 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Mercury 2 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 7 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 36.2 to 33.2.
- Mercury 2 is cheaper at $0.25 / $0.75 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Inception | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 38.8 | 37.7 |
| Released | 2026-02-20 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 262K |
| Max output | 50K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.75 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1170 | 1275 |
| WeirdML | 43.2% | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1391 | 1413 |
| ALE-Bench | 785.58 | 461.45 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| SciCode | 38.7% | — |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
Reasoning Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1362 | 1372 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| CritPt | 0.8% | — |
Math Not comparable
Mercury 2: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1364 |
Knowledge Too close to call
Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1358 | 1337 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.3% | — |
Multilingual Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1331 | 1345 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1416 | 1356 |
| LMArena Russian | 1303 | 1367 |
| LMArena French | — | 1394 |
| LMArena German | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1309 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1307 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1360 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1356 |
Long Context Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1329 | 1379 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)
| Benchmark | Mercury 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1355 | 1356 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1289 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1358 | 1365 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 37.7 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Mercury 2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $0.75 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.2 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Mercury 2 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?
14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mercury 2 has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.