Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
GPT-5 (high) is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 79 to 65. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
GPT-5 (high)'s sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 66.1 against 41.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Pro, 70 to 43.
Pick GPT-5 (high) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mercury 2 only becomes the better choice if its workflow or ecosystem matters more than the raw scoreboard.
GPT-5 (high)
75.2
Mercury 2
63.7
GPT-5 (high)
66.1
Mercury 2
41.1
GPT-5 (high)
89.4
Mercury 2
68.3
GPT-5 (high)
85.7
Mercury 2
80.1
GPT-5 (high)
71.1
Mercury 2
57.2
GPT-5 (high)
91
Mercury 2
84
GPT-5 (high)
86.4
Mercury 2
79.7
GPT-5 (high)
94
Mercury 2
80.9
GPT-5 (high) is ahead overall, 79 to 65. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Pro, where the scores are 70 and 43.
GPT-5 (high) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.1 versus 57.2. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5 (high) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 66.1 versus 41.1. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5 (high) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 94 versus 80.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5 (high) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 85.7 versus 80.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5 (high) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.2 versus 63.7. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5 (high) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 89.4 versus 68.3. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5 (high) has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 91 versus 84. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5 (high) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 86.4 versus 79.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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