Model comparison

Granite 4.2 8B vs Mistral Medium 3.1

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 31.5 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 0 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 8B IBM

40.0

Rank #143 Confirmed

Mistral Medium 3.1

Mistral AI

31.5

Rank #260 Reported

Summary

The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 25.5 to 10.1.
Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $2 for Mistral Medium 3.1.
Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral Medium 3.1 specifications
	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.1
Provider	IBM	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	40.0	31.5
Released	—	—
Weights	Open	Proprietary
Context window	131K	131K
Max output	118K	105K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.06	$0.40
Output $ / M tokens	$0.25	$2
Results tracked	11	3

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 39.9 (#138), Mistral Medium 3.1: —

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.1
LMArena Coding	1379	—

Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 25.5 (#130), Mistral Medium 3.1: 10.1 (#336)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.1
NYT Connections (extended)	—	6.5%
Thematic Generalization	—	20.3%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1327	—

Knowledge Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 37.7 (#144), Mistral Medium 3.1: —

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.1
LMArena Expert	1380	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#173), Mistral Medium 3.1: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.1
LMArena Non-English	1299	—
LMArena Chinese	1361	—
LMArena Russian	1283	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#183), Mistral Medium 3.1: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.1
LMArena Instruction Following	1298	—

Long Context Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.2 (#154), Mistral Medium 3.1: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.1
LMArena Longer Query	1323	—

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium 3.1 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 49.8 (#183), Mistral Medium 3.1: 55.6 (#140)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.1
LMArena Text	1319	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1238	—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	—	1476
LMArena Multi-Turn	1299	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Mistral Medium 3.1?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 31.5 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Mistral Medium 3.1?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.1 lists at $0.40 and $2.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 131K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral Medium 3.1 share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium 3.1 has 3.