Mercury 2.5 vs Llama 4 Maverick
Mercury 2.5 leads Llama 4 Maverick on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 12.3 to 9.3, and Mercury 2.5 costs 6.7x less per output token ($0.15 vs $1.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 8 benchmarks have a result for both.
Mercury 2.5 or Llama 4 Maverick: which to pick
Only Mercury 2.5 has a coding score, 1.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; Llama 4 Maverick has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Llama 4 Maverick for a larger context window (524K against 260K tokens) and work measured by MedCode (Vals AI), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 8
- Mercury 2.5 only
- 14
- Llama 4 Maverick only
- 77
- Like-for-like categories
- 5 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
No call
Only Mercury 2.5 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5 leads, 12.3 against 9.3.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Llama 4 Maverick has a AA Agentic Index result, 0.6.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Llama 4 Maverick has a GPQA Diamond result, 69.4%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Llama 4 Maverick has a AIME result, 25.2%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Llama 4 Maverick has a MMLU Pro result, 79.4%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Llama 4 Maverick has a Design Arena: websites result, 871.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Llama 4 Maverick
Llama 4 Maverick takes 524K tokens against 260K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mercury 2.5
Mercury 2.5 $0.0001, Llama 4 Maverick $0.0008 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Llama 4 Maverick has the number, $1.491.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Mercury 2.5 1.6 from 2 benchmarks, Llama 4 Maverick not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- General, 11.3 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Long context reasoning (AA-LCR): Mercury 2.5 71.7% against Llama 4 Maverick 50.0%, 21.7 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Mercury 2.5 $0.15 against Llama 4 Maverick $1.00 per million output tokens, 6.7x apart.
- Context window
- Mercury 2.5 takes 260K tokens, Llama 4 Maverick 524K.
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 | Mercury 2.5 | Bars | Llama 4 Maverick | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 2 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 1 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 1 | 1 | ||
| General | 2 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 7 | 1 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index20
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | Not measured | 15.6% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| SWE-bench Verified | Not measured | 21.0% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| AA Coding Index | Not measured | 16.3 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 47.3% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 3.7% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 4.5% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 2.4% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 34.5% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | 18.1% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | 45.5% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 39.7% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| SciCode | 38.5% | 31.7% | Mercury 2.5 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 6.8% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| WeirdML | Not measured | 24.5% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| ALE-Bench | 301.6 | 173.0 | Mercury 2.5 |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1301 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1299 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 25 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 12.3 | 9.3 | Mercury 2.5 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Not measured | 132.2 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | Not measured | 0.6 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 18.9% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 2.5% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 4.3% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 8.8% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | Not measured | 17.8% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 35 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 69.4% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | Not measured | 71.7% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 67.1% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 11.8% | 4.9% | Mercury 2.5 |
| ARC-AGI | Not measured | 4.4% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 27.7% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1281 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1259 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1295 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | Not measured | 1134 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | Not measured | 1164 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | Not measured | 55.9% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 25.2% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.2% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | Not measured | 92.4% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| AA Math Index | Not measured | 19.3 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 19.3% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| ProofBench | 3.0% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1299 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1295 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 79.4% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 83.1% | 77.8% | Mercury 2.5 |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 49.7% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 66.6% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 58.5% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | Not measured | 43.3% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 31.3% | 36.5% | Llama 4 Maverick |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 80.9% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| GeoBench | Not measured | 52.0% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1288 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1275 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1286 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1260 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | Not measured | 871 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | Not measured | 897 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | Not measured | 837 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | Not measured | 882 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | Not measured | 900 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | Not measured | 879 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 45.3% | Not measured | Only Mercury 2.5 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 35.7% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 55.1% | 54.2% | Mercury 2.5 |
| IFBench | Not measured | 43.0% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 71.7% | 50.0% | Mercury 2.5 |
| DTBench | Not measured | 61.9% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMCA | Not measured | 15.9% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Fiction.LiveBench | Not measured | 46.2% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | Not measured | 62.0% | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1287 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1267 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1266 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Vision | Not measured | 1142 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1303 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1269 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1277 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1291 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1206 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1203 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1259 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | Not measured | 1293 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1286 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1275 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1289 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1280 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1277 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1250 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | Not measured | 1150 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | Not measured | 1141 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | Not measured | 1143 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | Not measured | 1100 | Only Llama 4 Maverick measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | Not measured | 1099 | Only Llama 4 Maverick 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
| Benchmark | Mercury 2.5 | Llama 4 Maverick | 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 | Inception Mercury 2.5 | Meta Llama 4 Maverick |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Inception | Meta Llama |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | September 8, 2026 | April 5, 2025 |
| Context window | 260K | 524K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.04 | $0.35 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.15 | $1.00 |
| Coding index | 1.6 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $1.491 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Mercury 2.5 better than Llama 4 Maverick for coding?
Only Mercury 2.5 has a coding score, 1.6 on the Vibe Coding Index; Llama 4 Maverick has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Llama 4 Maverick for a larger context window (524K against 260K tokens) and work measured by MedCode (Vals AI), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Mercury 2.5 or Llama 4 Maverick?
Mercury 2.5 costs $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Llama 4 Maverick costs $0.35 and $1.00. Cost per solved task is known for Llama 4 Maverick only.
Which has the bigger context window, Mercury 2.5 or Llama 4 Maverick?
Llama 4 Maverick, with 524K tokens against 260K.
How many benchmarks is the Mercury 2.5 vs Llama 4 Maverick comparison based on?
8 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Mercury 2.5's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Llama 4 Maverick's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.