AI model comparison
Mercury 2 vs Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B
Pricing, context window, benchmarks, and features compared side by side. Or skip the guesswork and send one prompt to both.
Inception
Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM).
- Input / 1M
- $0.25
- Output / 1M
- $0.75
- Context
- 128K
Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct is a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) code generation model developed by the Qwen team.
- Input / 1M
- $0.30
- Output / 1M
- $1
- Context
- 262K
At a glance
Quick verdict
How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.
Lower price
Mercury 2
1.3x cheaper for a typical chat
Higher intelligence score
Mercury 2
13.8 vs 11.9 on Artificial Analysis
Larger context window
Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B
262K vs 128K tokens
Newer release
Mercury 2
Released March 4, 2026
Benchmarks
Benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
Mercury 213.8Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B11.9Coding index
Mercury 231.1Qwen3 Coder 480B A35BNot availableAgentic index
Mercury 21.6Qwen3 Coder 480B A35BNot availablePricing
Mercury 2 vs Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B API pricing
Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.25 | $0.30 |
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.75 | $1 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | $0.03 | $0.10 |
| Cache writePer 1M tokens | Not available | Not available |
What it costs in practice
Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.
Chat message
2K in, 500 out
Mercury 2$0.88Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B$1.10Coding task
30K in, 4K out
Mercury 2$10.50$3.75 cachedQwen3 Coder 480B A35B$13$7 cachedLong document summary
150K in, 2K out
Mercury 2$39$5.25 cachedQwen3 Coder 480B A35B$47$17 cachedSpecs
Context window and capabilities
How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 128K tokens | 262K tokens |
| Max output | 50K tokens | 66K tokens |
| Input types | Text | Text |
| Output types | Text | Text |
| Reasoning effort levels | High, Medium, Low, None | Not available |
| Default reasoning effort | Medium | Not available |
| Release date | March 4, 2026 | July 23, 2025 |
Features
Supported features
API features available for each model.
| Metric | Mercury 2 | Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B |
|---|---|---|
| Tool calling | Supported | Supported |
| Structured outputs | Supported | Supported |
| JSON mode | Supported | Supported |
| Reasoning | Supported | Not supported |
| Temperature | Supported | Supported |
| Stop sequences | Supported | Supported |
| Deterministic seed | Not supported | Supported |
| Verbosity control | Not supported | Not supported |
Keep exploring
More on these models
Other head-to-heads, the full model page, and the alternatives list for each model.
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- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs MiniMax M1
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs Qwen3 Coder Next
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs Mistral Small 4
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs GLM 4.6V
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs GLM 4.5 Air
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs Trinity Large Thinking
- Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking
Our take
Mercury 2 is 1.3x cheaper for a typical chat. Mercury 2 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (13.8 vs 11.9). Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B has the larger context window (262K vs 128K tokens). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Mercury 2 or Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B cheaper?
Mercury 2 is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Mercury 2 costs $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens, while Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B costs $0.30 per 1M input tokens and $1 per 1M output tokens.
Which has a bigger context window, Mercury 2 or Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B?
Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B supports up to 262K tokens of context, compared with 128K for Mercury 2.
Is Mercury 2 smarter than Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B?
On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Mercury 2 scores 13.8 and Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B scores 11.9, putting Mercury 2 ahead. Benchmarks don't capture everything, so the best test is running your own prompts through both.
Can I use Mercury 2 and Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B at the same time?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Mercury 2 and Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B answer side by side and keep the better response.
Why choose? Ask both.
Send one prompt to Mercury 2 and Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.