Mercury 2 vs Llama 4 Maverick

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

Mercury 2 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 43. 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 51.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MuSR, 82 to 42.

Mercury 2 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.25 input / $0.75 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Llama 4 Maverick. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Mercury 2 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Llama 4 Maverick 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. Llama 4 Maverick gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Mercury 2.

Quick Verdict

Pick Mercury 2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Llama 4 Maverick only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you need the larger 1M context window.

Agentic

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

63.7

Llama 4 Maverick

40.9

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
37
67
BrowseComp
51
62
OSWorld-Verified
38

Coding

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

41.1

Llama 4 Maverick

15.7

75
HumanEval
38
46
SWE-bench Verified
13
38
LiveCodeBench
15
43
SWE-bench Pro
17

Multimodal & Grounded

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

68.3

Llama 4 Maverick

56.8

66
MMMU-Pro
59
71
OfficeQA Pro
54

Reasoning

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.1

Llama 4 Maverick

54

82
SimpleQA
44
82
MuSR
42
87
BBH
63
77
LongBench v2
63
76
MRCRv2
63

Knowledge

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

57.2

Llama 4 Maverick

36.5

78
MMLU
46
78
GPQA
45
76
SuperGPQA
43
74
OpenBookQA
41
72
MMLU-Pro
53
9
HLE
4
69
FrontierScience
45

Instruction Following

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

84

Llama 4 Maverick

68

84
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

79.7

Llama 4 Maverick

59.8

81
MGSM
63
79
MMLU-ProX
58

Mathematics

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.9

Llama 4 Maverick

51.3

81
AIME 2023
46
83
AIME 2024
48
82
AIME 2025
47
77
HMMT Feb 2023
42
79
HMMT Feb 2024
44
78
HMMT Feb 2025
43
80
BRUMO 2025
45
82
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 is ahead overall, 65 to 43. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MuSR, where the scores are 82 and 42.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.2 versus 36.5. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 41.1 versus 15.7. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 80.9 versus 51.3. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.1 versus 54. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 63.7 versus 40.9. 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 Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 68.3 versus 56.8. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 68. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Mercury 2 or Llama 4 Maverick?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 versus 59.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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