Model comparison
Granite 4.2 3b vs Mistral Large 3
Granite 4.2 3b and Mistral Large 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.4 vs 39.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 3b scores higher in 3 categories and Mistral Large 3 in 4 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Large 3 leads 60.0 to 47.2.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 39.4 | 39.1 |
| Released | — | 2025-12-02 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | — | 262K |
| Max output | — | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 11 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 40.0 (#151), Mistral Large 3: 34.4 (#237)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1361 | 1448 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1230 |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 26.0 (#138), Mistral Large 3: 15.2 (#319)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1306 | 1429 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 50.9% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 7.5% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 23% |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Mistral Large 3: 38.7 (#129)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1414 |
Knowledge Too close to call
Granite 4.2 3b: 36.3 (#171), Mistral Large 3: 36.0 (#177)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1315 | 1421 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 14.5% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Mistral Large 3: 38.2 (#66)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1221 |
Multilingual Mistral Large 3 leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 42.1 (#198), Mistral Large 3: 52.5 (#84)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1413 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1269 | 1447 |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | 1411 |
| LMArena French | — | 1455 |
| LMArena German | — | 1437 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1394 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1384 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1440 |
Instruction Following Mistral Large 3 leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 67.1 (#200), Mistral Large 3: 74.0 (#108)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1273 | 1403 |
Long Context Mistral Large 3 leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.2 (#185), Mistral Large 3: 43.1 (#105)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1291 | 1413 |
Writing & Preference Mistral Large 3 leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 47.2 (#212), Mistral Large 3: 60.0 (#101)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1293 | 1428 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1205 | 1386 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1290 | 1429 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1412 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Mistral Large 3?
Granite 4.2 3b and Mistral Large 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.4 vs 39.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Granite 4.2 3b or Mistral Large 3 better for coding?
Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.0 versus 34.4 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Mistral Large 3 share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Large 3 has 24.