# Granite 4.2 30b vs Llama 3-8B

> Granite 4.2 30b is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 25.5 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-llama-3-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 30b scores higher in 7 categories and Llama 3-8B in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 30b leads 39.1 to 7.8.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 41.8 | 25.5 |
| Rank | 130 | 344 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 30b: 41.0 (#126)
- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#289)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1396 | 1152 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 31.9% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 36.9% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 56.7% |
| MBPP+ | — | 54.8% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 30b: 27.8 (#112)
- Llama 3-8B: 14.3 (#326)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1374 | 1133 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | — | 43.9% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 57.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 116.45 |
| ForecastBench | — | 58.6 |
| WinoGrande | — | 75.7% |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 30b: —
- Llama 3-8B: 8.8 (#323)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 1.9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1151 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 6.1% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 30b: 39.1 (#138)
- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#308)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1406 | 1113 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 26.1% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 82.8% |
| MMLU | — | 68.8% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 82.6% |
| TriviaQA | — | 67.7% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 30b: 47.3 (#151)
- Llama 3-8B: 30.8 (#261)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1340 | 1098 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1414 | 1076 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1109 |
| LMArena French | — | 1159 |
| LMArena German | — | 1104 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 967 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1004 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1173 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 30b: 71.2 (#155)
- Llama 3-8B: 58.4 (#260)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1347 | 1127 |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 30b: 41.4 (#140)
- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#251)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1359 | 1128 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 30b: 53.8 (#156)
- Llama 3-8B: 37.5 (#256)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1361 | 1166 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1288 | 1150 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1339 | 1152 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 30b better than Llama 3-8B?

Granite 4.2 30b is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 25.5 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 4.2 30b or Llama 3-8B better for coding?

Granite 4.2 30b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.0 versus 31.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 30b and Llama 3-8B share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 30b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3-8B has 34.