Gemini 4 Argon vs Mercury 2.5
Gemini 4 Argon leads Mercury 2.5 on coding, 81.0 to 1.6 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Mercury 2.5 costs 66.7x less per output token ($0.15 vs $10.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 21 benchmarks have a result for both.
Gemini 4 Argon or Mercury 2.5: which to pick
Pick Gemini 4 Argon for coding: it scores 81.0 on the Vibe Coding Index against 1.6 for Mercury 2.5.
Pick Mercury 2.5 for output tokens 66.7x cheaper ($0.15 vs $10.00 per million).
- Shared results
- 21
- Gemini 4 Argon only
- 73
- Mercury 2.5 only
- 1
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
Gemini 4 Argon
Gemini 4 Argon scores 81.0 against 1.6.
5 and 2 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Gemini 4 Argon
Gemini 4 Argon leads, 52.6 against 12.3.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Gemini 4 Argon has a Design Arena: websites result, 1315.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
No call
Only Gemini 4 Argon has a Vals Index result, 69.2%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Gemini 4 Argon
Gemini 4 Argon takes 1.05M tokens against 260K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mercury 2.5
Gemini 4 Argon $0.0070, Mercury 2.5 $0.0001 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Gemini 4 Argon 81.0 from 5 benchmarks, Mercury 2.5 1.6 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Math, 96.0 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- IOI (Vals AI): Gemini 4 Argon 100.0% against Mercury 2.5 2.4%, 97.6 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Gemini 4 Argon $10.00 against Mercury 2.5 $0.15 per million output tokens, 66.7x apart.
- Context window
- Gemini 4 Argon takes 1.05M tokens, Mercury 2.5 260K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Gemini 4 Argon | Bars | Mercury 2.5 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 8 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 5 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 1 | 0 | ||
| Math | 1 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 2 | 0 | ||
| General | 3 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 21 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index80
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 89.7% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1678 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 57.6% | 0.0% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 91.9% | 3.7% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 68.2% | 4.5% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 2.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 100.0% | 2.4% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 57.7% | 34.5% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| SWE-bench Multimodal (Vals AI) | 56.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI) | 21.2% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 18.1% | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | 77.9% | 45.5% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| SciCode | 61.8% | 38.5% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| FrontierCode | 47.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| FrontierSWE | 55.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| MirrorCode | 58.9% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| ALE-Bench | 2100.1 | 301.6 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1546 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1556 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1692 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1643 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| SciCode | 12.3% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 52.6 | 12.3 | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 166.4 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index50
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: spreadsheets | 1157 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LiveBench research | 83.1% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LiveBench browser | 92.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 69.9% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | 44.3% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 65.4% | 18.9% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 44.6% | 2.5% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 54.8% | 4.3% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 27.1% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 75.2% | 8.8% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| BioMysteryBench (Vals AI) | 76.3% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | 44.3% | 0.0% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Vals Science Index | 55.4% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Time Horizon Index (Vals AI) | 52.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| CUA-bench (Vals AI) | 4.8% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Robo-bench (Vals AI) | 0.8% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| APEX-Agents | 82.4% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $13,718 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 23 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench reasoning | 95.1% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| MysteryMechanism (Vals AI) | 45.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 57.1% | 11.8% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 96.4% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| ARC-AGI | 98.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 91.3% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Chess puzzles | 59.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 64.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| EBR-bench | 64.8% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1546 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1550 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1548 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | 100.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 86.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 78.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| ProofBench | 99.0% | 3.0% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| LMArena Text: math | 1536 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1557 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 88.3% | 83.1% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 58.8% | 31.3% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| SimpleQA Verified | 76.0% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1548 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1555 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1548 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1525 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1315 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1333 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1377 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1332 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1388 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1329 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LiveBench design | 73.7% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 2 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 69.2% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LiveBench data analysis | 85.2% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 69.8% | 45.3% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 53.6% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 87.4% | 55.1% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 79.7% | 71.7% | Gemini 4 Argon |
| DTBench | 97.6% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMCA | 63.7% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Furniture assembly | 72.5% | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text | 1532 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1534 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1527 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1538 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1522 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1611 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1503 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1534 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1556 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1547 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1529 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1527 | Not measured | Only Gemini 4 Argon measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 25 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Gemini 4 Argon | Mercury 2.5 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mercury 2.5 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Mercury 2.5 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Mercury 2.5 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Google Gemini 4 Argon | Inception Mercury 2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Inception | |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | October 13, 2026 | September 8, 2026 |
| Context window | 1.05M | 260K |
| Input $/Mtok | $2.00 | $0.04 |
| Output $/Mtok | $10.00 | $0.15 |
| Coding index | 81.0 | 1.6 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 5 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Gemini 4 Argon better than Mercury 2.5 for coding?
Pick Gemini 4 Argon for coding: it scores 81.0 on the Vibe Coding Index against 1.6 for Mercury 2.5. Pick Mercury 2.5 for output tokens 66.7x cheaper ($0.15 vs $10.00 per million).
Which is cheaper, Gemini 4 Argon or Mercury 2.5?
Gemini 4 Argon costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens; Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04 and $0.15. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Gemini 4 Argon or Mercury 2.5?
Gemini 4 Argon, with 1.05M tokens against 260K.
How many benchmarks is the Gemini 4 Argon vs Mercury 2.5 comparison based on?
21 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Gemini 4 Argon's coding index rests on 5 independent benchmarks and Mercury 2.5's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.