# Granite 4.2 30b vs Mercury

> Granite 4.2 30b is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.

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

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 30b scores higher in 6 categories and Mercury in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 30b leads 27.8 to 17.5.
- Granite 4.2 30b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 30b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 41.8 | 37.6 |
| Rank | 130 | 199 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 30b: 41.0 (#126)
- Mercury: 38.7 (#170)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1396 | 1322 |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 30b: 27.8 (#112)
- Mercury: 17.5 (#293)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1374 | 1285 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 30b: 39.1 (#138)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1406 | — |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 30b: 47.3 (#151)
- Mercury: 41.6 (#206)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1340 | 1260 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1414 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 30b: 71.2 (#155)
- Mercury: 65.2 (#224)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1347 | 1239 |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 30b: 41.4 (#140)
- Mercury: 38.4 (#198)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1359 | 1266 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 30b: 53.8 (#156)
- Mercury: 46.2 (#221)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1361 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1288 | 1191 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1339 | 1282 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 30b better than Mercury?

Granite 4.2 30b is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.8 to 37.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 4.2 30b or Mercury better for coding?

Granite 4.2 30b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.0 versus 38.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 30b and Mercury share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 30b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.