o3-pro vs Mercury 2

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

o3-pro is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 71 to 65. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3-pro's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 67.1 against 57.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HLE, 26 to 9. Mercury 2 does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

o3-pro gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Mercury 2.

Quick Verdict

Pick o3-pro if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mercury 2 only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority.

Agentic

o3-pro

o3-pro

70.4

Mercury 2

63.7

69
Terminal-Bench 2.0
63
76
BrowseComp
67
68
OSWorld-Verified
62

Coding

o3-pro

o3-pro

49.2

Mercury 2

41.1

80
HumanEval
75
46
SWE-bench Verified
46
44
LiveCodeBench
38
55
SWE-bench Pro
43

Multimodal & Grounded

o3-pro

o3-pro

74.1

Mercury 2

68.3

70
MMMU-Pro
66
79
OfficeQA Pro
71

Reasoning

o3-pro

o3-pro

83.6

Mercury 2

80.1

86
SimpleQA
82
84
MuSR
82
89
BBH
87
81
LongBench v2
77
81
MRCRv2
76

Knowledge

o3-pro

o3-pro

67.1

Mercury 2

57.2

88
MMLU
78
89
GPQA
78
87
SuperGPQA
76
85
OpenBookQA
74
75
MMLU-Pro
72
26
HLE
9
77
FrontierScience
69

Instruction Following

Mercury 2

o3-pro

82

Mercury 2

84

82
IFEval
84

Multilingual

o3-pro

o3-pro

81.1

Mercury 2

79.7

83
MGSM
81
80
MMLU-ProX
79

Mathematics

o3-pro

o3-pro

89

Mercury 2

80.9

90
AIME 2023
81
92
AIME 2024
83
91
AIME 2025
82
86
HMMT Feb 2023
77
88
HMMT Feb 2024
79
87
HMMT Feb 2025
78
89
BRUMO 2025
80
89
MATH-500
82

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

o3-pro is ahead overall, 71 to 65. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HLE, where the scores are 26 and 9.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

o3-pro has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 67.1 versus 57.2. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

o3-pro has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.2 versus 41.1. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

o3-pro has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 89 versus 80.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

o3-pro has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 83.6 versus 80.1. Inside this category, MRCRv2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

o3-pro has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.4 versus 63.7. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

o3-pro has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.1 versus 68.3. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 84 versus 82. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, o3-pro or Mercury 2?

o3-pro has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.1 versus 79.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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