# Granite 4.2 3b vs Mercury

> Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 37.3 on the Noometry Index.

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

## Summary

- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 3b scores higher in 6 categories and Mercury in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 25.0 to 16.8.
- Granite 4.2 3b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 37.3 |
| Rank | 163 | 192 |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146)
- Mercury: 38.1 (#164)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1323 |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136)
- Mercury: 16.8 (#288)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1308 | 1284 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 21.6% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169)
- Mercury: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1313 | — |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193)
- Mercury: 41.7 (#201)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1259 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1268 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195)
- Mercury: 65.3 (#220)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1271 | 1238 |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179)
- Mercury: 38.3 (#193)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1293 | 1264 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202)
- Mercury: 46.2 (#216)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1295 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1215 | 1186 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1293 | 1283 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Mercury?

Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 37.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 4.2 3b or Mercury better for coding?

Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 38.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Mercury share?

8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mercury has 9.