Model comparison
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct vs Grok 4
Grok 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.1 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct scores higher in 0 categories and Grok 4 in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where Grok 4 leads 63.1 to 35.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 27.1% for Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and 63% for Grok 4.
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | xAI |
| Noometry Index | 32.4 | 48.1 |
| Released | — | 2025-07-09 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Results tracked | 13 | 48 |
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Category by category
Coding Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 34.5 (#233), Grok 4: 50.3 (#46)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1186 | 1408 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 79.6% |
| WeirdML | — | 45.7% |
Agentic & Tool Use Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 24.1 (#120), Grok 4: 32.3 (#68)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | 63% |
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| GDPval | — | 21.1% |
| Cybench | — | 43% |
| DeepResearch Bench | — | 47.3% |
| BALROG | — | 43.6% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1142 |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 66.6% |
Reasoning Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 22.1 (#207), Grok 4: 36.7 (#65)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1145 | 1409 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 16% |
| SimpleBench | — | 60.5% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 73.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 66.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 28% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 146.44 |
| ForecastBench | — | 60.9 |
Math Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 33.0 (#209), Grok 4: 48.4 (#64)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1152 | 1422 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 84% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 60.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 19.7% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 2.1% |
Knowledge Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#220), Grok 4: 53.8 (#55)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1142 | 1415 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 87% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 85.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 12.4% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 72.7% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: —, Grok 4: 33.7 (#94)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1210 |
| GeoBench | — | 45% |
Multilingual Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 30.9 (#260), Grok 4: 51.8 (#103)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1099 | 1403 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1145 | 1427 |
| LMArena Russian | 1092 | 1410 |
| LMArena French | — | 1418 |
| LMArena German | — | 1429 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1394 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1377 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1420 |
Instruction Following Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 58.6 (#259), Grok 4: 79.2 (#5)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1131 | 1387 |
| IFEval | — | 94.9% |
Long Context Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.2 (#241), Grok 4: 63.1 (#4)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1162 | 1409 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 94.4% |
Writing & Preference Grok 4 leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.5 (#266), Grok 4: 58.5 (#116)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1150 | 1411 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1129 | 1397 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1108 | 1416 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 76.9% |
| WildBench | — | 79.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct better than Grok 4?
Grok 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.1 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct or Grok 4 better for coding?
Grok 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.3 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and Grok 4 share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and Grok 4 has 48.