Model comparison

Granite 4.2 3b vs Mistral Medium

Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.4 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 11, 2026. 11 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 3b IBM

39.4

Rank #169 Confirmed

Mistral Medium

Mistral AI

36.3

Rank #218 Confirmed

Summary

They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 3b scores higher in 3 categories and Mistral Medium in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Medium leads 60.0 to 47.2.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 3b and Mistral Medium specifications
	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
Provider	IBM	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	39.4	36.3
Released	—	2023-12-11
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	—	262K
Max output	—	262K
Input $ / M tokens	—	$1.50
Output $ / M tokens	—	$7.50
Results tracked	11	36

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Category by category

Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 40.0 (#151), Mistral Medium: 34.2 (#243)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
LMArena Coding	1361	1434
FrontierCode	—	8%
SciCode	—	40.2%
WeirdML	—	43.7%
ALE-Bench	—	763.98

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: —, Mistral Medium: 28.3 (#90)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	37.7%

Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 26.0 (#138), Mistral Medium: 24.0 (#167)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
LMArena Hard Prompts	1306	1426
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	50%
CritPt	—	0%
DTBench	—	75.5%
LMCA	—	26.1%
Surface Evolver Bench	—	26.9%

Math Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: —, Mistral Medium: 28.1 (#245)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	32.2%
ProofBench	—	9%
LMArena Math	—	1408
MATH Level 5	—	81.6%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)	—	0.3%

Knowledge Granite 4.2 3b leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 36.3 (#171), Mistral Medium: 25.0 (#265)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
LMArena Expert	1315	1408
GPQA Diamond	—	59.5%
Humanity's Last Exam	—	4.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	22.7%

Multimodal Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: —, Mistral Medium: 35.3 (#88)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
LMArena Vision	—	1172

Multilingual Mistral Medium leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 42.1 (#198), Mistral Medium: 52.1 (#91)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
LMArena Non-English	1268	1408
LMArena Chinese	1269	1447
LMArena Russian	1249	1411
LMArena French	—	1459
LMArena German	—	1432
LMArena Japanese	—	1378
LMArena Korean	—	1380
LMArena Spanish	—	1433

Instruction Following Mistral Medium leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 67.1 (#200), Mistral Medium: 73.7 (#116)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
LMArena Instruction Following	1273	1398

Long Context Mistral Medium leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 39.2 (#185), Mistral Medium: 42.9 (#114)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
LMArena Longer Query	1291	1406

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 47.2 (#212), Mistral Medium: 60.0 (#103)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Mistral Medium
LMArena Text	1293	1424
LMArena Creative Writing	1205	1391
LMArena Multi-Turn	1290	1418
Short-Story Creative Writing	—	77.3%

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Mistral Medium?