# Mercury 2.5 vs Nemotron 3 Ultra

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Mercury 2.5 and Nemotron 3 Ultra across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/mercury-2-5-vs-nemotron-3-ultra
- Last updated: September 8, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 4
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Mercury 2.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Nemotron 3 Ultra only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Mercury 2.5 leads overall 53 to 40.57.
- The clearest category separation is in coding, where the averages are 47.8 for Mercury 2.5 and 26.8 for Nemotron 3 Ultra.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is τ³-bench results in Agentic, with scores of 96.0% and 70.9%.
- Nemotron 3 Ultra is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Nemotron 3 Ultra also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3 Ultra |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Inception | NVIDIA |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 260K | 1M |
| Overall Score | null | 40.57 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 5 | 24 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.04 / $0.15 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 44.5 (Estimated · #91/152)
- Nemotron 3 Ultra public-lane score: 27.1 (Supported · #142/152)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3 Ultra | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 96.0% | 70.9% | Mercury 2.5 |
| DeepSearchQA | 34.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 56.4% | Coming soon |
| PinchBench | Coming soon | 90.0% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 44.4% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | Coming soon | 37.4% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 50.9% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 47.8 (Estimated · #73/151)
- Nemotron 3 Ultra public-lane score: 26.8 (Supported · #145/151)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3 Ultra | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SciCode | 38% | 44.6% | Nemotron 3 Ultra |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 71.9% | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | Coming soon | 67.7% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | Coming soon | 89.0% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 56.4% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 86.0% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 69.0% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 67.7 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- Nemotron 3 Ultra public-lane score: 48.7 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3 Ultra | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CritPt | Coming soon | 3.1% | Coming soon |
| LongBench v2 | Coming soon | 61.9% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 48.3 (Estimated · #94/182)
- Nemotron 3 Ultra public-lane score: 45 (Estimated · #112/182)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3 Ultra | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA-D | 79.0% | 87.0% | Nemotron 3 Ultra |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 87% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 26.7% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 26.7% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | Coming soon | 86.8% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 86.1% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 85.8% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Nemotron 3 Ultra
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 80.1 (#53/121)
- Nemotron 3 Ultra public-lane score: 88.8 (#28/121)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3 Ultra | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 77% | 81.7% | Nemotron 3 Ultra |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Coming soon
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Nemotron 3 Ultra public-lane score: 47.4 (#7/12)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Nemotron 3 Ultra | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU-ProX | Coming soon | 83% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Mercury 2.5 or Nemotron 3 Ultra?

Mercury 2.5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Mercury 2.5 and Nemotron 3 Ultra?

The widest category gap is in coding, where the averages are 47.8 for Mercury 2.5 and 26.8 for Nemotron 3 Ultra.

### How many benchmarks does Mercury 2.5 cover on BenchLM?

Mercury 2.5 currently has 5 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Nemotron 3 Ultra cover on BenchLM?

Nemotron 3 Ultra currently has 24 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Mercury 2.5 vs Mercury 2.5 Preview](/compare/mercury-2-5-vs-mercury-2-5-preview)
- [Nemotron 3 Ultra vs Mercury 2.5 Preview](/compare/mercury-2-5-preview-vs-nemotron-3-ultra)
- [Mercury 2.5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-mercury-2-5)
- [Nemotron 3 Ultra vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-nemotron-3-ultra)

## Explore More

- [Mercury 2.5 profile](/models/mercury-2-5)
- [Nemotron 3 Ultra profile](/models/nemotron-3-ultra)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)