Model comparison
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct vs Mercury
Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Mercury in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury leads 46.2 to 35.5.
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 32.4 | 37.6 |
| Released | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Results tracked | 13 | 9 |
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Category by category
Coding Mercury leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 34.5 (#233), Mercury: 38.7 (#170)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1186 | 1322 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 24.1 (#120), Mercury: —
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | — |
Reasoning Granite 3.1 8b Instruct leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 22.1 (#207), Mercury: 17.5 (#293)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1145 | 1285 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |
Math Not comparable
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 33.0 (#209), Mercury: —
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1152 | — |
Knowledge Not comparable
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#220), Mercury: —
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1142 | — |
Multilingual Mercury leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 30.9 (#260), Mercury: 41.6 (#206)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1099 | 1260 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1145 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1092 | — |
Instruction Following Mercury leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 58.6 (#259), Mercury: 65.2 (#224)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1131 | 1239 |
Long Context Mercury leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.2 (#241), Mercury: 38.4 (#198)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1162 | 1266 |
Writing & Preference Mercury leads
Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.5 (#266), Mercury: 46.2 (#221)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1150 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1129 | 1191 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1108 | 1282 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct better than Mercury?
Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct or Mercury better for coding?
Mercury scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.7 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and Mercury share?
8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.