Mercury 2 vs Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

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

Mercury 2 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 60. 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 69.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 75 to 62. Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

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 Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning). That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone.

Quick Verdict

Pick Mercury 2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

63.7

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

58.5

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
60
67
BrowseComp
61
62
OSWorld-Verified
55

Coding

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

41.1

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

35

75
HumanEval
62
46
SWE-bench Verified
39
38
LiveCodeBench
33
43
SWE-bench Pro
36

Multimodal & Grounded

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

Mercury 2

68.3

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

71.5

66
MMMU-Pro
71
71
OfficeQA Pro
72

Reasoning

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.1

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

69.2

82
SimpleQA
70
82
MuSR
70
87
BBH
80
77
LongBench v2
66
76
MRCRv2
66

Knowledge

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

57.2

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

52.1

78
MMLU
71
78
GPQA
70
76
SuperGPQA
68
74
OpenBookQA
66
72
MMLU-Pro
69
9
HLE
7
69
FrontierScience
62

Instruction Following

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

84

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

81

84
IFEval
81

Multilingual

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

79.7

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

77.8

81
MGSM
81
79
MMLU-ProX
76

Mathematics

Mercury 2

Mercury 2

80.9

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

75.2

81
AIME 2023
73
83
AIME 2024
75
82
AIME 2025
74
77
HMMT Feb 2023
69
79
HMMT Feb 2024
71
78
HMMT Feb 2025
70
80
BRUMO 2025
72
82
MATH-500
79

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 is ahead overall, 65 to 60. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 75 and 62.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.2 versus 52.1. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 41.1 versus 35. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 80.9 versus 75.2. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.1 versus 69.2. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 63.7 versus 58.5. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.5 versus 68.3. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 81. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Mercury 2 or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Mercury 2 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 versus 77.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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