Model comparison
GPT-5 Nano vs Granite 4.2 3b
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 Nano scores higher in 3 categories and Granite 4.2 3b in 4 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 25.0 to 16.4.
- Granite 4.2 3b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 39.0 |
| Released | 2025-08-07 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 400K | — |
| Max output | 128K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.40 | — |
| Results tracked | 48 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads
GPT-5 Nano: 33.3 (#248), Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1351 | 1363 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 34.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 38.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 718.67 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
GPT-5 Nano: 25.6 (#99), Granite 4.2 3b: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 21.8% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 51.5% | — |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads
GPT-5 Nano: 16.4 (#291), Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1308 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 2.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 62.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 20.7% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 27% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 9% | — |
| DTBench | 62.7% | — |
| LMCA | 7.9% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 139.39 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.1 | — |
Math Not comparable
GPT-5 Nano: 29.1 (#221), Granite 4.2 3b: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 20% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 81.1% | — |
| ProofBench | 12% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 54.6% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1318 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 95.2% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 8.3% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 2.1% | — |
Knowledge Too close to call
GPT-5 Nano: 35.8 (#166), Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1321 | 1313 |
| GPQA Diamond | 69.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 11.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 77.8% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.5% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 67.9% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
GPT-5 Nano: 30.7 (#102), Granite 4.2 3b: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1159 | — |
| VPCT | 37.2% | — |
Multilingual GPT-5 Nano leads
GPT-5 Nano: 45.5 (#167), Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1313 | 1268 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1355 | 1268 |
| LMArena Russian | 1296 | 1249 |
| LMArena German | 1329 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1269 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1360 | — |
Instruction Following GPT-5 Nano leads
GPT-5 Nano: 75.2 (#72), Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1306 | 1271 |
| IFEval | 93.2% | — |
Long Context Granite 4.2 3b leads
GPT-5 Nano: 31.3 (#275), Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1313 | 1293 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |
Writing & Preference Granite 4.2 3b leads
GPT-5 Nano: 39.4 (#244), Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202)
| Benchmark | GPT-5 Nano | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1295 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1250 | 1215 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1311 | 1293 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 705 | — |
| WildBench | 80.6% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is GPT-5 Nano better than Granite 4.2 3b?
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index.
Is GPT-5 Nano or Granite 4.2 3b better for coding?
Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 33.3 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do GPT-5 Nano and Granite 4.2 3b share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 Nano has 48 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 3b has 11.