Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Mercury 2 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 36. 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 42.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HumanEval, 75 to 24.
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 8B (Reasoning). That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone.
Pick Mercury 2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.
Mercury 2
63.7
Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)
38.5
Mercury 2
41.1
Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)
15.2
Mercury 2
68.3
Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)
33.4
Mercury 2
80.1
Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)
42.1
Mercury 2
57.2
Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)
30
Mercury 2
84
Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)
70
Mercury 2
79.7
Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)
61.7
Mercury 2
80.9
Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)
47.8
Mercury 2 is ahead overall, 65 to 36. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HumanEval, where the scores are 75 and 24.
Mercury 2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.2 versus 30. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Mercury 2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 41.1 versus 15.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Mercury 2 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 80.9 versus 47.8. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Mercury 2 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 80.1 versus 42.1. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Mercury 2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 63.7 versus 38.5. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Mercury 2 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 68.3 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Mercury 2 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 70. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Mercury 2 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.7 versus 61.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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