# Granite 4.2 3b vs Llama 3-8B

> Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index.

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

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 3b 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 3b leads 35.6 to 7.8.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 25.3 |
| Rank | 163 | 338 |
| Context | — | 8K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.14 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.14 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146)
- Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1152 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 31.9% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 36.9% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 56.7% |
| MBPP+ | — | 54.8% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136)
- Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1308 | 1133 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | — | 43.9% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 57.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 116.33 |
| ForecastBench | — | 58.6 |
| WinoGrande | — | 75.7% |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 3b: —
- Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)

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

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169)
- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1313 | 1113 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 26.1% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 82.8% |
| MMLU | — | 68.8% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 82.6% |
| TriviaQA | — | 67.7% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193)
- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1098 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1268 | 1076 |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | 1109 |
| LMArena French | — | 1158 |
| LMArena German | — | 1104 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 967 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1003 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1172 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195)
- Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1271 | 1127 |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179)
- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1293 | 1128 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202)
- Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1295 | 1166 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1215 | 1150 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1293 | 1152 |

## FAQ

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

Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index.

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

Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 30.5 in the Noometry coding category.

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

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