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Mercury 2 vs Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)

Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) are closely matched at 23.3 and 29.9 on the LLM Stats Score.

Inception · NVIDIA · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 23.3 and 29.9.

In the 2 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) wins 2; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Mercury 2

  • you want predictable pricing at $0.25/M input and $0.75/M output

Choose Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)

  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 2 of 2 exact shared results
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026
  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Mercury 2
Inception
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)
NVIDIA
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
23.3
#197
29.9
#142
Reasoning
22.4
#192
29.2
#143
Coding
12.0
#171
14.8
#151
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
0 of 2
2 of 2
Input price
$0.25 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.75 / M
— / M
Context window
128,000
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Mercury 2
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)
Math
22.8#143
23.6#135
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

6 reported for Mercury 2 · 10 for Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)

2 shared

Mercury 2 outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) is better at 2 benchmarks (GPQA, SciCode).

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Mon Oct 19 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

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).

Inception
Mercury 2
Input128,000 tokens
Output8,192 tokens
NVIDIA
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Mon Oct 19 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mercury 2 does not.

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Mercury 2

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Mercury 2 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) uses OpenMDW License v1.1.

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

Mercury 2

Proprietary

Closed source

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)

OpenMDW License v1.1

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mercury 2 was released on 2026-02-24, while Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) was released on 2026-10-15.

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) is 8 months newer than Mercury 2.

Mercury 2

Feb 24, 2026

7 months ago

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)

Oct 15, 2026

2 days ago

7mo newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2026-05-01, while Mercury 2's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)'s training data extends to 2026-05-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without Mercury 2's cutoff date.

Mercury 2

—

Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)

May 2026

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Mercury 2
✓ Preferred
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mercury 2 vs Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB).

Which is better, Mercury 2 or Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)?

Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at 23.3 and 29.9. Mercury 2 is made by Inception and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) is made by NVIDIA. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Mercury 2 compare to Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) in benchmarks?

Mercury 2 scores AIME 2025: 91.1%, GPQA: 74.0%, IFBench: 71.0%, LiveCodeBench: 67.0%, Tau2 Airline: 53.0%. Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) scores PinchBench: 87.8%, GPQA: 86.4%, BrowseComp: 66.8%, AA-LCR: 64.1%, MCP Atlas: 52.2%.

What are the context window sizes for Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)?

Mercury 2 supports 128K tokens and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (23.3 vs 29.9), multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (Proprietary vs OpenMDW License v1.1). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Mercury 2 and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB)?

Mercury 2 is developed by Inception and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt (74B A9B 24GB) is developed by NVIDIA.

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