Mercury 2 vs Kimi K2

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

Mercury 2 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 34. 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 reasoning, where it averages 80.1 against 40.9. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MuSR, 82 to 28.

Mercury 2 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Kimi K2 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.

Quick Verdict

Pick Mercury 2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Kimi K2 only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

63.7

Kimi K2

29.3

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
27
67
BrowseComp
36
62
OSWorld-Verified
27

Coding

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

41.1

Kimi K2

12.8

75
HumanEval
24
46
SWE-bench Verified
15
38
LiveCodeBench
12
43
SWE-bench Pro
13

Multimodal & Grounded

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

68.3

Kimi K2

39.5

66
MMMU-Pro
35
71
OfficeQA Pro
45

Reasoning

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.1

Kimi K2

40.9

82
SimpleQA
30
82
MuSR
28
87
BBH
61
77
LongBench v2
47
76
MRCRv2
50

Knowledge

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

57.2

Kimi K2

29.3

78
MMLU
32
78
GPQA
31
76
SuperGPQA
29
74
OpenBookQA
27
72
MMLU-Pro
51
9
HLE
3
69
FrontierScience
34

Instruction Following

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

84

Kimi K2

67

84
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

79.7

Kimi K2

59.7

81
MGSM
61
79
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.9

Kimi K2

42.7

81
AIME 2023
32
83
AIME 2024
34
82
AIME 2025
33
77
HMMT Feb 2023
28
79
HMMT Feb 2024
30
78
HMMT Feb 2025
29
80
BRUMO 2025
31
82
MATH-500
57

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Mercury 2 or Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 is ahead overall, 65 to 34. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MuSR, where the scores are 82 and 28.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Mercury 2 or Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.2 versus 29.3. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Mercury 2 or Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 41.1 versus 12.8. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Mercury 2 or Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 80.9 versus 42.7. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Mercury 2 or Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.1 versus 40.9. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Mercury 2 or Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 63.7 versus 29.3. 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 Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 68.3 versus 39.5. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Mercury 2 or Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Mercury 2 or Kimi K2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 versus 59.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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