Model comparison
Granite 4.2 3b vs Mercury
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.4 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 3b scores higher in 6 categories and Mercury in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 26.0 to 17.5.
- Granite 4.2 3b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 39.4 | 37.6 |
| Released | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Results tracked | 11 | 9 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 40.0 (#151), Mercury: 38.7 (#170)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1361 | 1322 |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 26.0 (#138), Mercury: 17.5 (#293)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1306 | 1285 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |
Knowledge Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: 36.3 (#171), Mercury: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1315 | — |
Multilingual Too close to call
Granite 4.2 3b: 42.1 (#198), Mercury: 41.6 (#206)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1260 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1269 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | — |
Instruction Following Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 67.1 (#200), Mercury: 65.2 (#224)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1273 | 1239 |
Long Context Too close to call
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.2 (#185), Mercury: 38.4 (#198)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1291 | 1266 |
Writing & Preference Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 47.2 (#212), Mercury: 46.2 (#221)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1293 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1205 | 1191 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1290 | 1282 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Mercury?
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.4 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 4.2 3b or Mercury better for coding?
Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.0 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Mercury share?
8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.