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GPT-4.1 vs Mercury 2

Updated October 21, 2026. 34 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.

Replace GPT-4.1 Replace Mercury 2
GPT-4.1OpenAI
Coding
46.5
Overall
12.7
Output $/M
$8.00
25
Mercury 2Inception
Coding
0.0
Overall
10.8
Output $/M
$0.75
9
vs boards won of 34 shared

Decision reading

Pick GPT-4.1 for coding: it scores 46.5 on the Vibe Coding Index against 0.0 for Mercury 2.

Pick Mercury 2 when output tokens cost 10.7x less, or when what matters is Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) or WeirdML, where it leads.

Model AGPT-4.1OpenAI46.5/1002 independent benchmarks$0.37 per solved taskModel BMercury 2Inception0.0/1001 independent benchmarkNo cost per solved task
Shared results
34
GPT-4.1 only
53
Mercury 2 only
8
Like-for-like categories
7 of 9

Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.

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.

At a glance

Coding index
GPT-4.1 46.5 from 2 benchmarks, Mercury 2 0.0 from 1 benchmark.
Widest category
Agentic work, 23.7 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
Widest single gap
IFBench: GPT-4.1 43.0% against Mercury 2 69.8%, 26.8 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price
GPT-4.1 $8.00 against Mercury 2 $0.75 per million output tokens, 10.7x apart.
Context window
GPT-4.1 takes 1.05M tokens, Mercury 2 128K.

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.

Boards won, where both have a result
CategoryGPT-4.1BarsMercury 2Ties
Coding23
Intelligence10
Agentic work01
Reasoning32
Knowledge30
Web design51
General112
All shared boards259
CodingLike-for-likeFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index23
Coding benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
Aider polyglot52.4%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
SWE-bench Verified39.6%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
SWE-bench Multimodal31.1%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena WebDevNot measured1171Only Mercury 2 measured
AA Coding IndexNot measured31.1Only Mercury 2 measured
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)54.7%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run)45.7%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
SciCodeNot measured37.7%Only Mercury 2 measured
Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run)13.6%26.5%Mercury 2
WeirdML39.0%43.2%Mercury 2
ALE-Bench558.1785.6Mercury 2
LMArena Text: coding13901390GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: software and IT13911385GPT-4.1
LMArena WebDev: ReactNot measured1160Only Mercury 2 measured
LMArena WebDev: HTMLNot measured1199Only Mercury 2 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 23 boards here
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
Intelligence benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
AA Intelligence Index12.710.8GPT-4.1
Epoch Capabilities Index136.7Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
Agentic work benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
AA Agentic IndexNot measured1.6Only Mercury 2 measured
τ²-Bench Telecom47.1%70.8%Mercury 2
Neither model has a result on the other 37 boards here
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index32
Reasoning benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
GPQA Diamond65.4%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)72.4%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)66.6%77.0%Mercury 2
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)4.2%17.1%Mercury 2
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)66.9%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
ARC-AGI5.5%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
ARC-AGI-20.4%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
SimpleBench27.0%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
Chess puzzles3.0%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts13841362GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: expert13641358GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English13931374GPT-4.1
LMArena Vision: diagrams1215Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Vision: homework1248Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10 boards, none shared
Math benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
AIME39.6%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
MATH 500 (Vals AI)87.2%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
MGSM (Vals AI)87.7%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
AA Math Index34.7Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run)34.7%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
OTIS Mock AIME38.3%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 36.0%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
MATH level 583.0%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: math1369Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: mathematical work1360Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30
Knowledge benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
MMLU Pro80.5%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LegalBench (Vals AI)83.1%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
CaseLaw (Vals AI)69.9%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
CorpFin (Vals AI)63.0%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
TaxEval (Vals AI)75.1%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
MortgageTax (Vals AI)65.9%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
MedQA (Vals AI)91.2%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run)80.6%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
SimpleQA Verified31.1%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
GeoBench72.0%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: science13821343GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare13791363GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: legal and government1399Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: business and finance13691349GPT-4.1
Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index51
Web design benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
Design Arena: websites10391036GPT-4.1
Design Arena: UI components1000998GPT-4.1
Design Arena: game dev1080985GPT-4.1
Design Arena: data viz11041009GPT-4.1
Design Arena: 3D850982Mercury 2
Design Arena: all code categories10261022GPT-4.1
Design Arena: SVGNot measured998Only Mercury 2 measured
Design Arena: ASCII artNot measured990Only Mercury 2 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index112
General benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
IFBench43.0%69.8%Mercury 2
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)68.3%43.7%GPT-4.1
DTBench68.3%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMCA25.6%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
Fiction.LiveBench63.9%Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text13831354GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: instruction following13671328GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: creative writing13631286GPT-4.1
LMArena Vision1210Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: English13921378GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: non-English13701330GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: Chinese13821414Mercury 2
LMArena Text: German1381Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: Japanese1319Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: Korean1338Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: French1382Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: Spanish1376Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: Russian13771304GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: Polish1389Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Text: multi-turn13971357GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: longer queries13851329GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: writing and language13711300GPT-4.1
LMArena Text: entertainment and media13651314GPT-4.1
LMArena Vision: English1209Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Vision: Chinese1226Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Vision: reading text1218Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Vision: humor1196Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Vision: captioning1207Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Vision: recognizing things1208Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
LMArena Vision: creative writing1210Not measuredOnly GPT-4.1 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 16 boards here
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
Image generation benchmarks for GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
BenchmarkGPT-4.1Mercury 2Leader
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

GPT-4.1$0.0060Fits in one request
Mercury 2$0.0006Fits in one request

Mercury 2 costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

GPT-4.1$0.124Fits in one request
Mercury 2$0.015Fits in one request

Mercury 2 costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

GPT-4.1$0.480Fits in one request
Mercury 2$0.058Exceeds the context window

Mercury 2 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.

Specifications of GPT-4.1 and Mercury 2
SpecificationOpenAI GPT-4.1Inception Mercury 2
MakerOpenAIInception
WeightsNo public weights listedNo public weights listed
ReleasedApril 14, 2025March 4, 2026
Context window1.05M128K
Input $/Mtok$2.00$0.25
Output $/Mtok$8.00$0.75
Coding index46.50.0
Independent measurements behind it21
Cost per solved task$0.37Not computable
SourceOpenRouter listingOpenRouter listing

Questions

Is GPT-4.1 better than Mercury 2 for coding?

Pick GPT-4.1 for coding: it scores 46.5 on the Vibe Coding Index against 0.0 for Mercury 2. Pick Mercury 2 when output tokens cost 10.7x less, or when what matters is Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) or WeirdML, where it leads.

Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 or Mercury 2?

GPT-4.1 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $8.00 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 costs $0.25 and $0.75. Cost per solved task is known for GPT-4.1 only.

Which has the bigger context window, GPT-4.1 or Mercury 2?

GPT-4.1, with 1.05M tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks is the GPT-4.1 vs Mercury 2 comparison based on?

34 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. GPT-4.1's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Mercury 2's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

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