Model comparison

Granite 4.2 8B vs Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 11 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 8B IBM

40.5

Rank #148 Confirmed

Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct

Summary

They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 8B scores higher in 6 categories and Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in long context, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 40.3 to 26.4.
Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.10 / $0.32 for Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct.
Granite 4.2 8B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 8B and Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct specifications
	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
Provider	IBM	Meta
Noometry Index	40.5	30.6
Released	—	2024-12-06
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	128K
Max output	118K	4K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.06	$0.10
Output $ / M tokens	$0.25	$0.32
Results tracked	11	43

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137), Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 31.0 (#290)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
LMArena Coding	1380	1268
SciCode	—	26%
WeirdML	—	14.4%
BigCodeBench Instruct	—	46.9%
LiveBench Coding	—	36.6%
BigCodeBench Complete	—	57.5%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: —, Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 25.8 (#105)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	31.9%
BALROG	—	23%

Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131), Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 14.1 (#327)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
LMArena Hard Prompts	1329	1257
SimpleBench	—	19.9%
CritPt	—	0%
LiveBench Reasoning	—	50.8%
DTBench	—	59.5%
LiveBench Data Analysis	—	49.5%
LMCA	—	17.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	127.33
ForecastBench	—	58.6
LiveBench	—	50.2%

Math Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: —, Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 15.3 (#298)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	5.1%
LiveBench Math	—	42.2%
LMArena Math	—	1267
MATH Level 5	—	41.6%

Knowledge Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145), Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 30.6 (#226)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
LMArena Expert	1384	1225
GPQA Diamond	—	47.4%
Confabulations	—	22.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	4.1%
MMLU	—	86.3%

Multilingual Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178), Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 39.9 (#220)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
LMArena Non-English	1302	1236
LMArena Chinese	1366	1217
LMArena Russian	1285	1252
LMArena French	—	1281
LMArena German	—	1251
LMArena Japanese	—	1150
LMArena Korean	—	1143
LMArena Spanish	—	1270

Instruction Following Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184), Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 71.1 (#157)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following	1301	1242
LiveBench Instruction Following	—	82.7%

Long Context Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159), Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 26.4 (#295)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
LMArena Longer Query	1324	1256
Fiction.LiveBench	—	33.3%

Writing & Preference Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189), Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct: 47.6 (#207)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
LMArena Text	1320	1274
LMArena Creative Writing	1236	1250
LMArena Multi-Turn	1301	1280
LiveBench Language	—	39.2%

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct lists at $0.10 and $0.32.

Is Granite 4.2 8B or Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 31.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Granite 4.2 8B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct has 43.