Model comparison
Granite 4.2 30b vs Grok 3
Granite 4.2 30b is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 39.9 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 30b scores higher in 2 categories and Grok 3 in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 30b leads 27.8 to 13.7.
- Granite 4.2 30b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | xAI |
| Noometry Index | 41.8 | 39.9 |
| Released | — | 2025-04-09 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Results tracked | 11 | 40 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Granite 4.2 30b: 41.0 (#126), Grok 3: 41.9 (#115)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1396 | 1432 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 53.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 37.2% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.2 30b: —, Grok 3: 30.5 (#76)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | — | 29.5% |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 30b leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 27.8 (#112), Grok 3: 13.7 (#333)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1374 | 1434 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0% |
| SimpleBench | — | 36.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 61.3% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 5.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 138.33 |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 30b: —, Grok 3: 38.0 (#145)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 55.6% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.4% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1391 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 88.7% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 3.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |
Knowledge Grok 3 leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 39.1 (#138), Grok 3: 46.2 (#82)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1406 | 1421 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 75.8% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.8% |
| Confabulations | — | 14.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.8% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 65% |
Multilingual Grok 3 leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 47.3 (#151), Grok 3: 52.3 (#87)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1340 | 1410 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1414 | 1448 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1416 |
| LMArena French | — | 1460 |
| LMArena German | — | 1431 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1387 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1373 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1417 |
Instruction Following Grok 3 leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 71.2 (#155), Grok 3: 75.0 (#73)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1347 | 1409 |
| IFEval | — | 88.4% |
Long Context Granite 4.2 30b leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 41.4 (#140), Grok 3: 38.7 (#192)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1359 | 1439 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 58.3% |
Writing & Preference Grok 3 leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 53.8 (#156), Grok 3: 55.8 (#141)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1361 | 1426 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1288 | 1414 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1339 | 1425 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 76.4% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1186 |
| WildBench | — | 84.9% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 30b better than Grok 3?
Granite 4.2 30b is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 39.9 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 4.2 30b or Grok 3 better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (41.0 vs 41.9); test both on your own repository before choosing.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 30b and Grok 3 share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 30b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Grok 3 has 40.