# Granite 3.1 8b Instruct vs Mercury

> Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-1-8b-instruct-vs-mercury
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 8

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Mercury in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mercury leads 46.2 to 35.5.
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 32.4 | 37.6 |
| Rank | 258 | 199 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 34.5 (#233)
- Mercury: 38.7 (#170)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1186 | 1322 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 24.1 (#120)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 22.1 (#207)
- Mercury: 17.5 (#293)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1145 | 1285 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |

## Math

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 33.0 (#209)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1152 | — |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#220)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1142 | — |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 30.9 (#260)
- Mercury: 41.6 (#206)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1099 | 1260 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1145 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1092 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 58.6 (#259)
- Mercury: 65.2 (#224)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1131 | 1239 |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.2 (#241)
- Mercury: 38.4 (#198)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1162 | 1266 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.5 (#266)
- Mercury: 46.2 (#221)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1150 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1129 | 1191 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1108 | 1282 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct better than Mercury?

Mercury is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct or Mercury better for coding?

Mercury scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.7 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and Mercury share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.