# Granite 3.1 2b Instruct vs StarCoder 2 3B

> Granite 3.1 2b Instruct has enough public results to be ranked (#243); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-1-2b-instruct-vs-starcoder-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 32.6 | 35.8 |
| Rank | 243 | — |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 32.9 (#255)
- StarCoder 2 3B: 32.9

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1149 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 21.4% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 27.4% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 21.0 (#206)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1138 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 88.01 |
| WinoGrande | — | 57.1% |

## Math

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 30.6 (#206)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1159 | — |
| GSM8K | — | 21.6% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 30.3 (#223)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1131 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 34.2% |
| MMLU | — | 36.6% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 29.2 (#264)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1068 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1138 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1063 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 58.0 (#259)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1116 | — |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 35.0 (#239)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1155 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 34.3 (#269)
- StarCoder 2 3B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1127 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1116 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1099 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.1 2b Instruct better than StarCoder 2 3B?

Granite 3.1 2b Instruct has enough public results to be ranked (#243); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Granite 3.1 2b Instruct or StarCoder 2 3B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (32.9 vs 32.9); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 2b Instruct and StarCoder 2 3B share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 2b Instruct has 12 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 3B has 7.