Model comparison
Amazon Nova Micro vs Granite 4.2 8B
Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 30.4 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Micro costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Granite 4.2 8B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Micro scores higher in 0 categories and Granite 4.2 8B in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 68.7 to 56.3.
- Amazon Nova Micro is cheaper at $0.035 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.06 / $0.25 for Granite 4.2 8B.
- Granite 4.2 8B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 30.4 | 40.5 |
| Released | 2024-12-03 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 131K |
| Max output | 10K | 118K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.035 | $0.06 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.14 | $0.25 |
| Results tracked | 32 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 8B leads
Amazon Nova Micro: 30.5 (#295), Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1218 | 1380 |
| LiveBench Coding | 20.2% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Amazon Nova Micro: 22.1 (#132), Granite 4.2 8B: —
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 22.3% | — |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads
Amazon Nova Micro: 17.4 (#294), Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1329 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 25.1% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 34% | — |
| LiveBench | 29.6% | — |
Math Not comparable
Amazon Nova Micro: 26.9 (#254), Granite 4.2 8B: —
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 21.4% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 34.5% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1206 | — |
Knowledge Granite 4.2 8B leads
Amazon Nova Micro: 29.6 (#237), Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1184 | 1384 |
| MMLU-Pro | 51.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.5% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 38.3% | — |
| MMLU | 70.8% | — |
Multilingual Granite 4.2 8B leads
Amazon Nova Micro: 36.5 (#239), Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1186 | 1302 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1209 | 1366 |
| LMArena Russian | 1185 | 1285 |
| LMArena French | 1238 | — |
| LMArena German | 1192 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1154 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1150 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1225 | — |
Instruction Following Granite 4.2 8B leads
Amazon Nova Micro: 56.3 (#272), Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1174 | 1301 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 48% | — |
| IFEval | 76% | — |
Long Context Granite 4.2 8B leads
Amazon Nova Micro: 36.5 (#229), Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1205 | 1324 |
Writing & Preference Granite 4.2 8B leads
Amazon Nova Micro: 39.5 (#247), Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Micro | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1208 | 1320 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1172 | 1236 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1178 | 1301 |
| WildBench | 74.3% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 15.8% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Amazon Nova Micro better than Granite 4.2 8B?
Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 30.4 on the Noometry Index. Amazon Nova Micro costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Granite 4.2 8B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Micro or Granite 4.2 8B?
Amazon Nova Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.035 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Granite 4.2 8B lists at $0.06 and $0.25.
Is Amazon Nova Micro or Granite 4.2 8B better for coding?
Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 30.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Granite 4.2 8B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Micro and Granite 4.2 8B share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Micro has 32 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 8B has 11.