# Granite 3.0 8b Instruct vs Kimi K2 (Jul 2025)

> Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.9 to 31.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-0-8b-instruct-vs-kimi-k2
- 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 0 categories and Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads 62.5 to 31.2.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Moonshot AI |
| Noometry Index | 31.1 | 40.9 |
| Rank | 266 | 134 |
| Context | — | 262K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.57 |
| Output $/M | — | $2.30 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#297)
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 43.1 (#83)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1113 | 1399 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 63.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 59.1% |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 42.8% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 29.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 35.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 597.5 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: —
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 32.2 (#59)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 35.7% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 59.1% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 59.2% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 20.0 (#227)
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 22.7 (#173)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1092 | 1384 |
| SimpleBench | — | 26.3% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 64.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 146.02 |
| ForecastBench | — | 60.2 |

## Math

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 30.3 (#211)
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 40.1 (#81)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1143 | 1396 |
| Omni-MATH | — | 65.4% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 21.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#233)
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 36.9 (#153)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1087 | 1363 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 81.9% |
| Confabulations | — | 20.4% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 17.9% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 65.3% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 27.4 (#271)
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 49.8 (#125)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1037 | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1063 | 1416 |
| LMArena Russian | 1060 | 1384 |
| LMArena French | — | 1379 |
| LMArena German | — | 1386 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1349 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1383 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 56.2 (#271)
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 71.3 (#151)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1088 | 1347 |
| IFEval | — | 85% |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 34.0 (#247)
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 41.2 (#140)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1122 | 1353 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
| CL-bench | — | 17.6% |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 31.2 (#280)
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 62.5 (#76)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1096 | 1380 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1071 | 1349 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1063 | 1371 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 85.6% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1666 |
| WildBench | — | 86.2% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct better than Kimi K2 (Jul 2025)?

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.9 to 31.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct or Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) better for coding?

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.1 versus 29.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has 14 scored results on Noometry and Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) has 42.