Mercer vs Salary.com
Zero of twelve models named Mercer first on the direct prompt; zero named Salary.com. Mercer was named by ten of the twelve models and Salary.com by nine and Mercer carries 28 labels and Salary.com 16, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in four categories this edition.
Named in three categories this edition.
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all twelve models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the compensation benchmarking data page.
By framing
MercerFirst choices, of twelve modelsSalary.com
Across every category in the September 2026 Edition, Mercer and Salary.com were named in the same answer forty-two times, of the 109 answers naming Mercer and the 141 naming Salary.com. In those answers Salary.com took the first choice two times and Mercer five.
Every model, every framing
| Model | Direct | Paraphrase | Comparative | Budget-constrained | Scale-constrained | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | | |||||
| GPT-5.4 mini | | | | | ||
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | | | | | | |
| Perplexity Sonar | | | ||||
| Grok 4.1 Fast | | | | |||
| Mistral Small | | | ||||
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | | |||||
| Llama 4 Maverick | ||||||
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | | | | | ||
| Kimi K2 | | | ||||
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | | | ||||
| MiniMax M2.5 | | |
Mercer Salary.com first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, Mercer on the left and Salary.com on the right.The direct prompt
Neither was the first choice, one was named
8 of 12 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.Neither was named
4 of 12 modelsThe answer made no first choice from these two in this category.Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.
By buyer segment
Salary.com6%#3 of 10Mercer0%#9 of 10Mercer6%#4 of 8Salary.com2%#6 of 8Mercer26%#1 of 10Salary.com3%#6 of 10What the models said about Mercer
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of eight in this category shown.
“Avoid over-investing in Mercer/WTW unless you have global complexity” Kimi K2 · paraphrase prompt · hard negative
“Avoid traditional surveys (Mercer/Radford: $10k+/year) unless scaling.” Grok 4.1 Fast · budget prompt · hard negative
“high-end, legacy enterprise surveys like Mercer, Radford (Aon), or Willis Towers Watson (WTW)—which can easily cost $20,000 to $40,000+ annually—are generally out of reach” Gemini 3.5 Flash · budget prompt · soft negative
“Buy one major survey (like Robert Half or Mercer) to ensure you are paying within the 25th–75th percentiles” Qwen 3.7 Flash · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“The strongest fit from the results is Mercer or Salary.com/Compdata for broad benchmarking” Perplexity Sonar · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“Especially strong in pay and total rewards benchmarking, plus HR strategy.” GPT-5.4 mini · comparative prompt · first choice
What the models said about Salary.com
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. One of one in this category shown.
“Best all-around for mid-sized companies: Compdata Max / Salary.com” Perplexity Sonar · paraphrase prompt · first choice
Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category, each against each. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.