# Granite 4.1 8b vs o3-mini

> Granite 4.1 8b and o3-mini score almost the same on the Noometry Index (37.4 vs 36.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-1-8b-vs-o3-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.1 8b scores higher in 3 categories and o3-mini in 5 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where o3-mini leads 40.8 to 30.1.
- Granite 4.1 8b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 37.4 | 36.7 |
| Rank | 205 | 212 |
| Context | — | 200K |
| Input $/M | — | $1.10 |
| Output $/M | — | $4.40 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 4.1 8b: 30.1 (#297)
- o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1312 | 1378 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1192 | — |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| CadEval | — | 54% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 4.1 8b: —
- o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.1 8b: 25.7 (#143)
- o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1293 | 1366 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| LMCA | — | 19% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 140.34 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |

## Math

- Granite 4.1 8b: 36.4 (#166)
- o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1312 | 1396 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 76.9% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.1 8b: 36.1 (#174)
- o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1309 | 1364 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.1 8b: 41.7 (#204)
- o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1261 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1337 | 1379 |
| LMArena Russian | 1240 | 1304 |
| LMArena French | — | 1334 |
| LMArena German | — | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1314 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1321 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.1 8b: 66.9 (#203)
- o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1269 | 1337 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.1 8b: 38.7 (#193)
- o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1275 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.1 8b: 48.1 (#204)
- o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.1 8b | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1290 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1251 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1268 | 1320 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.1 8b better than o3-mini?

Granite 4.1 8b and o3-mini score almost the same on the Noometry Index (37.4 vs 36.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Granite 4.1 8b or o3-mini better for coding?

o3-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 30.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.1 8b and o3-mini share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.1 8b has 13 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.