# Codestral vs Granite 4.2 8B

> Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-granite-4-2-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in coding, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 39.9 to 26.9.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $0.90 for Codestral.
- Codestral accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 131K.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 30.1 | 40.0 |
| Rank | 287 | 143 |
| Context | 256K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.06 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $0.25 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Codestral: 26.9 (#316)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 39.9 (#138)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1379 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.1 (#244)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 25.5 (#130)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1327 |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Granite 4.2 8B: 37.7 (#144)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1380 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#173)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1299 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1361 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1283 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#183)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1298 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.2 (#154)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1323 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.8 (#183)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1319 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1238 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1299 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Granite 4.2 8B?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or Granite 4.2 8B?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Codestral lists at $0.30 and $0.90.

### Is Codestral or Granite 4.2 8B better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.9 versus 26.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Codestral does, with 256K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Granite 4.2 8B share?

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