# Claude 3 Opus vs Granite 4.2 3b

> Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-3-opus-vs-granite-4-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Opus scores higher in 0 categories and Granite 4.2 3b in 7 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 35.6 to 24.5.
- Granite 4.2 3b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 29.3 | 39.0 |
| Rank | 300 | 163 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 3 Opus: 32.4 (#261)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1264 | 1363 |
| WeirdML | 19.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.5% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 38.6% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 57.4% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 77.4% | — |
| MBPP+ | 73.3% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude 3 Opus: 24.3 (#110)
- Granite 4.2 3b: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | 10% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 29.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude 3 Opus: 14.2 (#318)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1246 | 1308 |
| SimpleBench | 23.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 5% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 0.8% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 40.6% | — |
| DTBench | 61.6% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 57.9% | — |
| LMCA | 17% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 126.91 | — |
| ForecastBench | 58.4 | — |
| LiveBench | 49.2% | — |
| WinoGrande | 88.5% | — |

## Math

- Claude 3 Opus: 13.9 (#293)
- Granite 4.2 3b: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 4.7% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 43.6% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1273 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 37.5% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude 3 Opus: 24.5 (#262)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1223 | 1313 |
| GPQA Diamond | 47.2% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 12.6% | — |
| Confabulations | 22.7% | — |
| MMLU | 84.6% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude 3 Opus: 26.6 (#112)
- Granite 4.2 3b: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1023 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude 3 Opus: 41.6 (#202)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1258 | 1268 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1248 | 1268 |
| LMArena Russian | 1280 | 1249 |
| LMArena French | 1274 | — |
| LMArena German | 1258 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1204 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1187 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1246 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 3 Opus: 64.3 (#223)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1248 | 1271 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.9% | — |

## Long Context

- Claude 3 Opus: 38.2 (#197)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1259 | 1293 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 3 Opus: 47.4 (#208)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1262 | 1295 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1235 | 1215 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | 1293 |
| LiveBench Language | 50.4% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 3 Opus better than Granite 4.2 3b?

Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Claude 3 Opus or Granite 4.2 3b better for coding?

Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 32.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 3 Opus and Granite 4.2 3b share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Opus has 46 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 3b has 11.