# Granite 3.0 2b Instruct vs StarCoder 2 3B

> Granite 3.0 2b Instruct has enough public results to be ranked (#286); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-0-2b-instruct-vs-starcoder-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in coding, where StarCoder 2 3B leads 33.5 to 28.3.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 30.8 | 36.3 |
| Rank | 286 | — |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 28.3 (#316)
- StarCoder 2 3B: 33.5

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 20.5% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1090 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 21.4% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 27.4% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 20.5 (#235)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1073 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 88.76 |
| WinoGrande | — | 57.1% |

## Math

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 32.2 (#217)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1117 | — |
| GSM8K | — | 21.6% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 29.0 (#241)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1064 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 34.2% |
| MMLU | — | 36.6% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 27.0 (#278)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1033 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1070 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1045 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 53.9 (#284)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1056 | — |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 32.5 (#268)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1070 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.0 2b Instruct: 29.6 (#292)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1080 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1046 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1053 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.0 2b Instruct better than StarCoder 2 3B?

Granite 3.0 2b Instruct has enough public results to be ranked (#286); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Granite 3.0 2b Instruct or StarCoder 2 3B better for coding?

StarCoder 2 3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.5 versus 28.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.0 2b Instruct and StarCoder 2 3B share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.0 2b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 3B has 7.