# Granite 3.0 8b Instruct vs Grok 3

> Grok 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 31.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-0-8b-instruct-vs-grok-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Grok 3 in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multilingual, where Grok 3 leads 52.5 to 27.4.
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | xAI |
| Noometry Index | 31.1 | 39.6 |
| Rank | 266 | 150 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#297)
- Grok 3: 41.5 (#113)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1113 | 1432 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 53.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 37.2% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 29.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 35.4% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: —
- Grok 3: 30.2 (#69)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | — | 29.5% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 20.0 (#227)
- Grok 3: 13.8 (#322)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1092 | 1433 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0% |
| SimpleBench | — | 36.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 61.3% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 5.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 138.34 |

## Math

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 30.3 (#211)
- Grok 3: 36.2 (#122)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1143 | 1390 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 55.6% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.4% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 88.7% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 3.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#233)
- Grok 3: 46.0 (#76)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1087 | 1420 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 75.8% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.8% |
| Confabulations | — | 14.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.8% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 65% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 27.4 (#271)
- Grok 3: 52.5 (#81)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1037 | 1411 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1063 | 1448 |
| LMArena Russian | 1060 | 1416 |
| LMArena French | — | 1460 |
| LMArena German | — | 1431 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1374 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1417 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 56.2 (#271)
- Grok 3: 75.2 (#69)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1088 | 1409 |
| IFEval | — | 88.4% |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 34.0 (#247)
- Grok 3: 38.7 (#187)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1122 | 1439 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 58.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 31.2 (#280)
- Grok 3: 56.0 (#136)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Grok 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1096 | 1426 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1071 | 1414 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1063 | 1424 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 76.4% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1186 |
| WildBench | — | 84.9% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct better than Grok 3?

Grok 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 31.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct or Grok 3 better for coding?

Grok 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.5 versus 29.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and Grok 3 share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has 14 scored results on Noometry and Grok 3 has 40.