# Mercury 2.5 vs ZAYA1-8B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Mercury 2.5 and ZAYA1-8B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/mercury-2-5-vs-zaya1-8b
- Last updated: September 8, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 2
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Evidence is too thin for a benchmark verdict: Mercury 2.5 and ZAYA1-8B share only 2 sourced benchmark rows.

## Summary

- Only 2 shared sourced benchmark rows are available. That is not enough for a broad capability verdict, so this mirror does not name an overall winner.
- ZAYA1-8B has the lower published output-token price.
- Mercury 2.5 has the larger published context window at 260K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Mercury 2.5 | ZAYA1-8B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Inception | Zyphra |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 260K | 131K |
| Independent public score (not head-to-head) | null | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 5 | 11 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.04 / $0.15 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 44.5 (Estimated · #91/152)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 46.4 (Estimated · #80/152)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 96.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | 34.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | Coming soon | 39.2% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 47.8 (Estimated · #73/151)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SciCode | 38% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | Coming soon | 65.8% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 67.7 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: Coming soon

### Knowledge

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 48.3 (Estimated · #94/182)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 43.9 (Estimated · #118/182)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA-D | 79.0% | 71.0% | Mercury 2.5 |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 71% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: 80.1 (#53/121)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 35.6 (#109/121)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 77% | 52.6% | Mercury 2.5 |
| IFEval | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Mercury 2.5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 62.6 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 89.1% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 71.6% | Coming soon |
| IMOAnswerBench | Coming soon | 59.3% | Coming soon |
| Apex | Coming soon | 32.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Is there enough evidence to pick between Mercury 2.5 and ZAYA1-8B?

Not yet. The models share only 2 sourced benchmark rows, so this mirror reports the available measurements and metadata without naming a broad winner.

### What can I compare safely on this page?

Published pricing, context windows, model type, and individual shared benchmark rows are directly comparable. Independent overall scores and non-overlapping benchmark coverage are labeled separately and should not be read as a controlled head-to-head result.

## Related Comparisons

- [Mercury 2.5 vs Mercury 2.5 Preview](/compare/mercury-2-5-vs-mercury-2-5-preview)
- [ZAYA1-8B vs Mercury 2.5 Preview](/compare/mercury-2-5-preview-vs-zaya1-8b)
- [Mercury 2.5 vs ZAYA1-74B-Preview](/compare/mercury-2-5-vs-zaya1-74b-preview)
- [ZAYA1-8B vs ZAYA1-74B-Preview](/compare/zaya1-74b-preview-vs-zaya1-8b)

## Explore More

- [Mercury 2.5 profile](/models/mercury-2-5)
- [ZAYA1-8B profile](/models/zaya1-8b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)