Model comparison

Granite 4.2 8B vs Mistral 7B

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 22.9 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 11 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 8B IBM

40.0

Rank #143 Confirmed

Mistral 7B

Mistral AI

22.9

Rank #346 Confirmed

Summary

They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 8B scores higher in 7 categories and Mistral 7B in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 37.7 to 7.3.
Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.25 for Mistral 7B.
Granite 4.2 8B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 8K.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral 7B specifications
	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
Provider	IBM	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	40.0	22.9
Released	—	2023-09-27
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	8K
Max output	118K	8K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.06	$0.25
Output $ / M tokens	$0.25	$0.25
Results tracked	11	37

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Category by category

Coding Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 39.9 (#138), Mistral 7B: 25.9 (#321)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
LMArena Coding	1379	1082
BigCodeBench Instruct	—	19.5%
BigCodeBench Complete	—	27.3%
HumanEval+	—	36%
MBPP+	—	42.1%

Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 25.5 (#130), Mistral 7B: 12.6 (#331)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
LMArena Hard Prompts	1327	1067
Chess Puzzles	—	0%
DTBench	—	42.5%
Adversarial NLI	—	47.1%
BIG-Bench Hard	—	56.1%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	111.97
HellaSwag	—	81%
PIQA	—	83%
WinoGrande	—	75.3%

Math Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: —, Mistral 7B: 7.6 (#319)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	0.3%
LMArena Math	—	1085
MATH Level 5	—	3.7%
GSM8K	—	54.4%

Knowledge Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 37.7 (#144), Mistral 7B: 7.3 (#306)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
LMArena Expert	1380	1036
GPQA Diamond	—	15.2%
ARC (AI2) Challenge	—	78.6%
BoolQ	—	87.4%
MMLU	—	62.5%
OpenBookQA	—	79.8%
TriviaQA	—	75.2%

Multilingual Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#173), Mistral 7B: 26.0 (#278)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
LMArena Non-English	1299	1012
LMArena Chinese	1361	1009
LMArena Russian	1283	1018
LMArena French	—	1036
LMArena German	—	987
LMArena Japanese	—	878
LMArena Spanish	—	1026

Instruction Following Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#183), Mistral 7B: 54.5 (#275)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
LMArena Instruction Following	1298	1060

Long Context Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.2 (#154), Mistral 7B: 32.2 (#266)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
LMArena Longer Query	1323	1060

Writing & Preference Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 49.8 (#183), Mistral 7B: 30.9 (#281)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral 7B
LMArena Text	1319	1090
LMArena Creative Writing	1238	1068
LMArena Multi-Turn	1299	1062

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Mistral 7B?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 22.9 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Mistral 7B?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Mistral 7B lists at $0.25 and $0.25.

Is Granite 4.2 8B or Mistral 7B better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.9 versus 25.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

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

How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral 7B share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mistral 7B has 37.