Model comparison

Granite 4.2 30b vs o3

o3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 41.8 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 11, 2026. 11 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 30b IBM

41.8

Rank #130 Confirmed

o3 OpenAI

47.5

Rank #61 Confirmed

Summary

They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 30b scores higher in 0 categories and o3 in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where o3 leads 54.6 to 39.1.
Granite 4.2 30b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 30b and o3 specifications
	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
Provider	IBM	OpenAI
Noometry Index	41.8	47.5
Released	—	2025-04-16
Weights	Open	Proprietary
Context window	—	200K
Max output	—	100K
Input $ / M tokens	—	$2
Output $ / M tokens	—	$8
Results tracked	11	63

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Category by category

Coding o3 leads

Granite 4.2 30b: 41.0 (#126), o3: 46.8 (#64)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
LMArena Coding	1396	1408
SWE-bench Verified	—	62.3%
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)	—	58.4%
Aider Polyglot	—	81.3%
GSO	—	8.8%
WeirdML	—	52.4%
CadEval	—	74%
ALE-Bench	—	933.55

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Granite 4.2 30b: —, o3: 34.5 (#44)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	63%
GDPval	—	30.8%
DeepResearch Bench	—	45.2%
OSWorld	—	23%
LMArena Search	—	1144
METR Time Horizons	—	65.4%

Reasoning o3 leads

Granite 4.2 30b: 27.8 (#112), o3: 32.0 (#78)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
LMArena Hard Prompts	1374	1402
ARC-AGI-2	—	6.5%
SimpleBench	—	53.1%
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	67.6%
ARC-AGI-1	—	60.8%
CritPt	—	1.4%
Chess Puzzles	—	38%
EnigmaEval	—	13.1%
Mystery Game Puzzles	—	29%
DTBench	—	84.8%
LMCA	—	39.7%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	146.86
ForecastBench	—	62.5

Math Not comparable

Granite 4.2 30b: —, o3: 50.2 (#58)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	—	33.3%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	84.4%
Omni-MATH	—	71.4%
LMArena Math	—	1426
MATH Level 5	—	97.8%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)	—	18.7%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)	—	2.1%

Knowledge o3 leads

Granite 4.2 30b: 39.1 (#138), o3: 54.6 (#52)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
LMArena Expert	1406	1402
GPQA Diamond	—	81.8%
Humanity's Last Exam	—	20.3%
SimpleQA Verified	—	49.4%
MMLU-Pro	—	85.9%
Confabulations	—	14.4%
GPQA (HELM)	—	75.3%

Multimodal Not comparable

Granite 4.2 30b: —, o3: 41.4 (#36)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
LMArena Vision	—	1214
GeoBench	—	74%
VPCT	—	52%

Multilingual o3 leads

Granite 4.2 30b: 47.3 (#151), o3: 51.7 (#105)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
LMArena Non-English	1340	1401
LMArena Chinese	1414	1437
LMArena Russian	1343	1406
LMArena French	—	1430
LMArena German	—	1420
LMArena Japanese	—	1403
LMArena Korean	—	1370
LMArena Spanish	—	1395

Instruction Following o3 leads

Granite 4.2 30b: 71.2 (#155), o3: 72.8 (#127)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
LMArena Instruction Following	1347	1368
IFEval	—	86.9%

Long Context o3 leads

Granite 4.2 30b: 41.4 (#140), o3: 53.3 (#6)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
LMArena Longer Query	1359	1372
Fiction.LiveBench	—	88.9%
CL-bench	—	17.8%

Writing & Preference o3 leads

Granite 4.2 30b: 53.8 (#156), o3: 63.5 (#64)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 30b	o3
LMArena Text	1361	1410
LMArena Creative Writing	1288	1359
LMArena Multi-Turn	1339	1405
Short-Story Creative Writing	—	83.9%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	—	1676
WildBench	—	86.1%

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 30b better than o3?