# Granite 4.2 3b vs Mistral Medium 3.5

> Granite 4.2 3b and Mistral Medium 3.5 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.0 vs 39.6), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-mistral-medium-3-5
- 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 2 categories and Mistral Medium 3.5 in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 58.6 to 47.9.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 39.6 |
| Rank | 163 | 151 |
| Context | — | 262K |
| Input $/M | — | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | — | $7.50 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146)
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 35.7 (#208)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1461 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1263 |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136)
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 16.6 (#290)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1308 | 1436 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 41.4% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 12.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 141.42 |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 3b: —
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.4 (#113)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1432 |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169)
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.3 (#123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1313 | 1431 |

## Multimodal

- Granite 4.2 3b: —
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 37.6 (#64)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1222 |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193)
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 52.1 (#93)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1405 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1268 | 1443 |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | 1396 |
| LMArena French | — | 1448 |
| LMArena German | — | 1453 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1387 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1406 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195)
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.7 (#87)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1271 | 1414 |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179)
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#101)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1293 | 1414 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202)
- Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.6 (#113)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1295 | 1421 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1215 | 1372 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1293 | 1423 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | — | 993 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Mistral Medium 3.5?

Granite 4.2 3b and Mistral Medium 3.5 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.0 vs 39.6), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Granite 4.2 3b or Mistral Medium 3.5 better for coding?

Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Mistral Medium 3.5 share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22.