Mercury 2 vs Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Mercury 2 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 44. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Mercury 2's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 80.9 against 48.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MuSR, 82 to 34.

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Mercury 2.

Quick Verdict

Pick Mercury 2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 200K context window.

Agentic

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

63.7

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

46.7

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
45
67
BrowseComp
49
62
OSWorld-Verified
47

Coding

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

41.1

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

21.8

75
HumanEval
30
46
SWE-bench Verified
20
38
LiveCodeBench
15
43
SWE-bench Pro
29

Multimodal & Grounded

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

68.3

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

59.3

66
MMMU-Pro
62
71
OfficeQA Pro
56

Reasoning

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.1

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

49.4

82
SimpleQA
36
82
MuSR
34
87
BBH
67
77
LongBench v2
60
76
MRCRv2
60

Knowledge

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

57.2

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

34.3

78
MMLU
38
78
GPQA
37
76
SuperGPQA
35
74
OpenBookQA
33
72
MMLU-Pro
53
9
HLE
8
69
FrontierScience
41

Instruction Following

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

84

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

66

84
IFEval
66

Multilingual

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

79.7

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

58.7

81
MGSM
60
79
MMLU-ProX
58

Mathematics

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.9

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

48.3

81
AIME 2023
38
83
AIME 2024
40
82
AIME 2025
39
77
HMMT Feb 2023
34
79
HMMT Feb 2024
36
78
HMMT Feb 2025
35
80
BRUMO 2025
37
82
MATH-500
62

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 is ahead overall, 65 to 44. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MuSR, where the scores are 82 and 34.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.2 versus 34.3. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 41.1 versus 21.8. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 80.9 versus 48.3. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.1 versus 49.4. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 63.7 versus 46.7. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 68.3 versus 59.3. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 66. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Mercury 2 or Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 versus 58.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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