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Model Comparison

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 vs Mercury 2Which is better in 2026?

Mercury 2 shows notably better performance in the majority of benchmarks.

Verdict: Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 vs Mercury 2 — which is better?

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 (by NVIDIA) and Mercury 2 (by Inception) are two of the AI models people compare most. Here is how they stack up on benchmarks, price and capabilities, and which one to pick in 2026.

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 outperforms in 1 benchmarks (GPQA), while Mercury 2 is better at 2 benchmarks (AIME 2025, LiveCodeBench). Mercury 2 shows notably better performance in the majority of benchmarks.

Choose Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 if…

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

Choose Mercury 2 if…

  • you want the strongest raw capability — it leads on 2 of 3 shared benchmarks
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Feb 2026

Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

3 benchmarks

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 outperforms in 1 benchmarks (GPQA), while Mercury 2 is better at 2 benchmarks (AIME 2025, LiveCodeBench).

Mercury 2 shows notably better performance in the majority of benchmarks.

Fri Aug 07 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Human preference votes

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Mercury 2 specifies input context (128,000 tokens). Only Mercury 2 specifies output context (8,192 tokens).

NVIDIA
Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Inception
Mercury 2
Input128,000 tokens
Output8,192 tokens
Fri Aug 07 2026 • llm-stats.com

License

Usage and distribution terms

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 is licensed under Llama 3.1 Community License, while Mercury 2 uses a proprietary license.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1

Llama 3.1 Community License

Open weights

Mercury 2

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 was released on 2025-04-07, while Mercury 2 was released on 2026-02-24.

Mercury 2 is 11 months newer than Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1.

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1

Apr 7, 2025

1.3 years ago

Mercury 2

Feb 24, 2026

5 months ago

10mo newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2023-12-01, while Mercury 2's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1's training data extends to 2023-12-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without Mercury 2's cutoff date.

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1

Dec 2023

Mercury 2

—

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Key Takeaways

NVIDIA
Has open weights
Higher GPQA score (76.0% vs 74.0%)
Inception
Larger context window (128,000 tokens)
Higher AIME 2025 score (91.1% vs 72.5%)
Higher LiveCodeBench score (67.0% vs 66.3%)

Detailed Comparison

Interactive Arena

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 and Mercury 2 side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1
✓ Preferred
Mercury 2
Open in Playground
AI Model Comparison Table
Feature
NVIDIA
Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1
Inception
Mercury 2

FAQ

Common questions about Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 vs Mercury 2.

Which is better, Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 or Mercury 2?

Mercury 2 shows notably better performance in the majority of benchmarks. Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 is made by NVIDIA and Mercury 2 is made by Inception. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their benchmark scores, pricing, and capabilities above.

How does Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 compare to Mercury 2 in benchmarks?

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 scores MATH-500: 97.0%, IFEval: 89.5%, GPQA: 76.0%, BFCL v2: 74.1%, AIME 2025: 72.5%. Mercury 2 scores AIME 2025: 91.1%, GPQA: 74.0%, IFBench: 71.0%, LiveCodeBench: 67.0%, Tau2 Airline: 53.0%.

What are the context window sizes for Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 and Mercury 2?

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 supports an unknown number of tokens and Mercury 2 supports 128K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 and Mercury 2?

Key differences include licensing (Llama 3.1 Community License vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 and Mercury 2?

Llama 3.1 Nemotron Ultra 253B v1 is developed by NVIDIA and Mercury 2 is developed by Inception.

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