# GPT-4o vs Granite 4.2 3b

> Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 28.5 on the Noometry Index.

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

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4o scores higher in 3 categories and Granite 4.2 3b in 4 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 25.0 to 9.4.
- Granite 4.2 3b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 28.5 | 39.0 |
| Rank | 316 | 163 |
| Context | 128K | — |
| Input $/M | $2.50 | — |
| Output $/M | $10 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-4o: 25.1 (#323)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1297 | 1363 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 31% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 21.6% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 45.3% | — |
| GSO | 0% | — |
| WeirdML | 25.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 51.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 51.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 61.1% | — |
| CadEval | 26% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 87.2% | — |
| MBPP+ | 72.2% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-4o: 20.8 (#133)
- Granite 4.2 3b: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| GDPval | 9.9% | — |
| TheAgentCompany | 8.6% | — |
| Cybench | 12.5% | — |
| BALROG | 32.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1006 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 40.8% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-4o: 9.4 (#338)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1281 | 1308 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| SimpleBench | 17.8% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 4.5% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 0.8% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 55.8% | — |
| DTBench | 64.5% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 60.9% | — |
| LMCA | 16.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 128.97 | — |
| ForecastBench | 57.7 | — |
| LiveBench | 55.3% | — |

## Math

- GPT-4o: 10.2 (#303)
- Granite 4.2 3b: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 0.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.4% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 29.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 49.5% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1285 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 53.3% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 0.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-4o: 28.8 (#235)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1250 | 1313 |
| GPQA Diamond | 49.2% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 2.7% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 26% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 71.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 15.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 9.6% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 52% | — |
| MMLU | 88.1% | — |

## Multimodal

- GPT-4o: 33.9 (#85)
- Granite 4.2 3b: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1137 | — |
| Video-MME | 71.9% | — |
| GeoBench | 71% | — |
| VPCT | 40% | — |
| ScienceQA | 88.5% | — |

## Multilingual

- GPT-4o: 43.4 (#181)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1283 | 1268 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1277 | 1268 |
| LMArena Russian | 1286 | 1249 |
| LMArena French | 1303 | — |
| LMArena German | 1282 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1257 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1292 | — |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-4o: 66.8 (#202)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1278 | 1271 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 68.6% | — |
| IFEval | 81.7% | — |

## Long Context

- GPT-4o: 39.4 (#174)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1289 | 1293 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-4o: 52.8 (#160)
- Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202)

| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Granite 4.2 3b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1300 | 1295 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1291 | 1215 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1302 | 1293 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 81.8% | — |
| WildBench | 82.8% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 47.6% | — |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-4o better than Granite 4.2 3b?

Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 28.5 on the Noometry Index.

### Is GPT-4o or Granite 4.2 3b better for coding?

Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 25.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-4o and Granite 4.2 3b share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4o has 72 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 3b has 11.