# Claude 3 Sonnet vs Granite 3.0 8b Instruct

> Granite 3.0 8b Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.1 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-3-sonnet-vs-granite-3-0-8b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 14

## Summary

- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Sonnet scores higher in 5 categories and Granite 3.0 8b Instruct in 3 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Granite 3.0 8b Instruct leads 30.3 to 10.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 53.8% for Claude 3 Sonnet and 35.4% for Granite 3.0 8b Instruct.
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 28.8 | 31.1 |
| Rank | 311 | 266 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 29.2 (#296)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#297)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 42.7% | 29.3% |
| LMArena Coding | 1223 | 1113 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 53.8% | 35.4% |
| WeirdML | 10.2% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 64% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.3% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 19.7 (#232)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 20.0 (#227)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1197 | 1092 |
| DTBench | 53.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 120.69 | — |
| WinoGrande | 75.1% | — |

## Math

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 10.0 (#305)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 30.3 (#211)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1213 | 1143 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.5% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 18.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 21.1 (#271)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#233)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1173 | 1087 |
| GPQA Diamond | 40.6% | — |
| MMLU | 75.9% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 24.7 (#120)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 984 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 38.0 (#229)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 27.4 (#271)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1205 | 1037 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1188 | 1063 |
| LMArena Russian | 1227 | 1060 |
| LMArena French | 1228 | — |
| LMArena German | 1204 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1131 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1128 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1204 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 63.1 (#230)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 56.2 (#271)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1200 | 1088 |

## Long Context

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 36.7 (#223)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 34.0 (#247)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1211 | 1122 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 42.3 (#233)
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 31.2 (#280)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1218 | 1096 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1186 | 1071 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1227 | 1063 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 3 Sonnet better than Granite 3.0 8b Instruct?

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.1 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Claude 3 Sonnet or Granite 3.0 8b Instruct better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (29.2 vs 29.1); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 3 Sonnet and Granite 3.0 8b Instruct share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Sonnet has 30 scored results on Noometry and Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has 14.