# Granite 4.2 3b vs Phi-3.5-mini

> Granite 4.2 3b has enough public results to be ranked (#163); Phi-3.5-mini does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-phi-3-5-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in coding, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 39.4 to 34.0.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 36.4 |
| Rank | 163 | — |
| Context | — | — |
| Input $/M | — | — |
| Output $/M | — | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146)
- Phi-3.5-mini: 34.0 (#231)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 32.8% |
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 38.5% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136)
- Phi-3.5-mini: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1308 | — |
| PIQA | — | 81% |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 3b: —
- Phi-3.5-mini: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| GSM8K | — | 86.2% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169)
- Phi-3.5-mini: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1313 | — |
| BoolQ | — | 78% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193)
- Phi-3.5-mini: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1268 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195)
- Phi-3.5-mini: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1271 | — |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179)
- Phi-3.5-mini: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1293 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202)
- Phi-3.5-mini: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Phi-3.5-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1295 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1215 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1293 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Phi-3.5-mini?

Granite 4.2 3b has enough public results to be ranked (#163); Phi-3.5-mini does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Granite 4.2 3b or Phi-3.5-mini better for coding?

Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Phi-3.5-mini share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Phi-3.5-mini has 5.