Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Claude Opus 4.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 85 to 65. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Opus 4.6's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 75.1 against 41.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 75 to 38.
Claude Opus 4.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $15.00 input / $75.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.25 input / $0.75 output per 1M tokens for Mercury 2. That is roughly 100.0x on output cost alone. Mercury 2 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Opus 4.6 is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Claude Opus 4.6 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Mercury 2.
Pick Claude Opus 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mercury 2 only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
Claude Opus 4.6
79.2
Mercury 2
63.7
Claude Opus 4.6
75.1
Mercury 2
41.1
Claude Opus 4.6
94.6
Mercury 2
68.3
Claude Opus 4.6
93.1
Mercury 2
80.1
Claude Opus 4.6
78.9
Mercury 2
57.2
Claude Opus 4.6
95
Mercury 2
84
Claude Opus 4.6
94.7
Mercury 2
79.7
Claude Opus 4.6
97.2
Mercury 2
80.9
Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead overall, 85 to 65. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 75 and 38.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.9 versus 57.2. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 41.1. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 97.2 versus 80.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 80.1. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.2 versus 63.7. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.6 versus 68.3. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 95 versus 84. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Opus 4.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 94.7 versus 79.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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