# DeepSeek-V3 vs Granite 4.2 3b

> DeepSeek-V3 and Granite 4.2 3b score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.5 vs 39.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/deepseek-v3-vs-granite-4-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-V3 scores higher in 5 categories and Granite 4.2 3b in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where DeepSeek-V3 leads 57.4 to 47.2.

## Snapshot

| | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 39.5 | 39.4 |
| Rank | 166 | 169 |
| Context | 164K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.24 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- DeepSeek-V3: 42.3 (#106)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 40.0 (#151)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1368 | 1361 |
| Aider Polyglot | 55.1% | — |
| SciCode | 35.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 36.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 50% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 70.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 62.2% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 86.6% | — |
| MBPP+ | 73% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- DeepSeek-V3: —
- Granite 4.2 3b: —

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| METR Time Horizons | 49.6% | — |

## Reasoning

- DeepSeek-V3: 20.5 (#236)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 26.0 (#138)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1365 | 1306 |
| SimpleBench | 27.2% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 52.3% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 65.8% | — |
| DTBench | 64.8% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 60.9% | — |
| LMCA | 15.5% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 87.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.94 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.1 | — |
| HellaSwag | 88.9% | — |
| LiveBench | 66.9% | — |
| PIQA | 84.7% | — |
| WinoGrande | 85.2% | — |

## Math

- DeepSeek-V3: 32.1 (#219)
- Granite 4.2 3b: —

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 37.8% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 40.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 73.5% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1373 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 75.5% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 1.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- DeepSeek-V3: 37.5 (#155)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 36.3 (#171)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1351 | 1315 |
| GPQA Diamond | 67.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 72.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 26.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 53.8% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 95.3% | — |
| MMLU | 87.2% | — |
| TriviaQA | 82.9% | — |

## Multilingual

- DeepSeek-V3: 48.5 (#143)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 42.1 (#198)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1358 | 1268 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1391 | 1269 |
| LMArena Russian | 1373 | 1249 |
| LMArena French | 1385 | — |
| LMArena German | 1374 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1333 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1319 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1358 | — |

## Instruction Following

- DeepSeek-V3: 72.8 (#130)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 67.1 (#200)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1345 | 1273 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 81.5% | — |
| IFEval | 83.2% | — |

## Long Context

- DeepSeek-V3: 34.0 (#253)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.2 (#185)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1352 | 1291 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 50% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- DeepSeek-V3: 57.4 (#130)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 47.2 (#212)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1375 | 1293 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1364 | 1205 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1389 | 1290 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1472 | — |
| WildBench | 83% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 49.1% | — |

## FAQ

### Is DeepSeek-V3 better than Granite 4.2 3b?

DeepSeek-V3 and Granite 4.2 3b score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.5 vs 39.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is DeepSeek-V3 or Granite 4.2 3b better for coding?

DeepSeek-V3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.3 versus 40.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-V3 and Granite 4.2 3b share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-V3 has 60 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 3b has 11.