# Granite 3.0 2b Instruct vs Llama 3-8B

> Granite 3.0 2b Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.2 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-0-2b-instruct-vs-llama-3-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 13

## Summary

- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.0 2b Instruct scores higher in 3 categories and Llama 3-8B in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Granite 3.0 2b Instruct leads 29.7 to 8.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Instruct: 20.5% for Granite 3.0 2b Instruct and 31.9% for Llama 3-8B.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 25.3 |
| Rank | 284 | 338 |
| Context | — | 8K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.14 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.14 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 27.8 (#311)
- Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 20.5% | 31.9% |
| LMArena Coding | 1090 | 1152 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 36.9% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 56.7% |
| MBPP+ | — | 54.8% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 19.6 (#234)
- Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1073 | 1133 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | — | 43.9% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 57.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 116.33 |
| ForecastBench | — | 58.6 |
| WinoGrande | — | 75.7% |

## Math

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 29.7 (#215)
- Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1117 | 1151 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 1.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 6.1% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 28.4 (#238)
- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1064 | 1113 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 26.1% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 82.8% |
| MMLU | — | 68.8% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 82.6% |
| TriviaQA | — | 67.7% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 27.1 (#273)
- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1033 | 1098 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1070 | 1076 |
| LMArena Russian | 1045 | 1109 |
| LMArena French | — | 1158 |
| LMArena German | — | 1104 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 967 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1003 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1172 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 54.2 (#279)
- Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1056 | 1127 |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 32.5 (#263)
- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1071 | 1128 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 29.8 (#287)
- Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1080 | 1166 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1046 | 1150 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1053 | 1152 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.0 2b Instruct better than Llama 3-8B?

Granite 3.0 2b Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.2 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 3.0 2b Instruct or Llama 3-8B better for coding?

Llama 3-8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 30.5 versus 27.8 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.0 2b Instruct and Llama 3-8B share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.0 2b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3-8B has 34.