Model comparison
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Granite 4.2 8B
Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 34.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores higher in 2 categories and Granite 4.2 8B in 5 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 38.4 to 28.6.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 34.6 | 40.5 |
| Released | 2024-06-20 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | — | 131K |
| Max output | — | 118K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.06 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.25 |
| Results tracked | 60 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 8B leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 39.0 (#165), Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1342 | 1380 |
| Aider Polyglot | 51.6% | — |
| GSO | 4.6% | — |
| WeirdML | 40% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 46.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 67.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 58.6% | — |
| CadEval | 48% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 81.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 74.3% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 32.3 (#67), Granite 4.2 8B: —
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | 24% | — |
| Cybench | 17.5% | — |
| BALROG | 32.6% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 45.2% | — |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 23.1 (#183), Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1305 | 1329 |
| SimpleBench | 41.4% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 0.9% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 56.7% | — |
| DTBench | 67.8% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 55% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.55 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.7 | — |
| LiveBench | 59% | — |
Math Not comparable
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 19.2 (#288), Granite 4.2 8B: —
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 8.5% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 27.6% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 52.3% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1307 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 56.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 2.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |
Knowledge Granite 4.2 8B leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 28.6 (#245), Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1265 | 1384 |
| GPQA Diamond | 55.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 4.1% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 77.7% | — |
| Confabulations | 19.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 56.5% | — |
| MMLU | 87.3% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 26.5 (#120), Granite 4.2 8B: —
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1125 | — |
| Video-MME | 60% | — |
| GeoBench | 62% | — |
| VPCT | 33% | — |
Multilingual Granite 4.2 8B leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 43.2 (#185), Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1283 | 1302 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1272 | 1366 |
| LMArena Russian | 1306 | 1285 |
| LMArena French | 1305 | — |
| LMArena German | 1297 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1200 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1290 | — |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 68.8 (#182), Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1297 | 1301 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 69.3% | — |
| IFEval | 85.5% | — |
Long Context Too close to call
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 39.9 (#167), Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1311 | 1324 |
Writing & Preference Claude 3.5 Sonnet leads
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 52.9 (#164), Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1298 | 1320 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1292 | 1236 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1326 | 1301 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 80.3% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1451 | — |
| WildBench | 79.2% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 53.8% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet better than Granite 4.2 8B?
Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 34.6 on the Noometry Index.
Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Granite 4.2 8B better for coding?
Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 39.0 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Granite 4.2 8B share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 60 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 8B has 11.