Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Mercury 2 and Seed 1.6 finish on the same overall score, so this is less about a single winner and more about where the edge shows up. The headline says tie; the benchmark table is where the real choice happens.
Seed 1.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.25 input / $2.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.25 input / $0.75 output per 1M tokens for Mercury 2. That is roughly 2.7x on output cost alone. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Mercury 2.
Treat this as a split decision. Mercury 2 makes more sense if reasoning is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill; Seed 1.6 is the better fit if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
Mercury 2
63.7
Seed 1.6
62.3
Mercury 2
41.1
Seed 1.6
42.4
Mercury 2
68.3
Seed 1.6
79.6
Mercury 2
80.1
Seed 1.6
74.5
Mercury 2
57.2
Seed 1.6
56.4
Mercury 2
84
Seed 1.6
87
Mercury 2
79.7
Seed 1.6
83.4
Mercury 2
80.9
Seed 1.6
75.9
Mercury 2 and Seed 1.6 are tied on overall score, so the right pick depends on which category matters most for your use case.
Mercury 2 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.2 versus 56.4. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Seed 1.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 41.1. 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 75.9. 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 74.5. 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 62.3. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 68.3. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 84. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 79.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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