# Granite 4.2 8B vs Grok 4

> Grok 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.1 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index.

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

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 8B scores higher in 0 categories and Grok 4 in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where Grok 4 leads 63.1 to 40.3.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | xAI |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 48.1 |
| Rank | 148 | 56 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.25 | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
- Grok 4: 50.3 (#46)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1408 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 79.6% |
| WeirdML | — | 45.7% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Grok 4: 32.3 (#68)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 63% |
| GDPval | — | 21.1% |
| Cybench | — | 43% |
| DeepResearch Bench | — | 47.3% |
| BALROG | — | 43.6% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1142 |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 66.6% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
- Grok 4: 36.7 (#65)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1409 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 16% |
| SimpleBench | — | 60.5% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 73.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 66.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 28% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 146.44 |
| ForecastBench | — | 60.9 |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Grok 4: 48.4 (#64)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 84% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 60.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1422 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 19.7% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 2.1% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
- Grok 4: 53.8 (#55)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | 1415 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 87% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 85.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 12.4% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 72.7% |

## Multimodal

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Grok 4: 33.7 (#94)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1210 |
| GeoBench | — | 45% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
- Grok 4: 51.8 (#103)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | 1403 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1427 |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | 1410 |
| LMArena French | — | 1418 |
| LMArena German | — | 1429 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1394 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1377 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1420 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
- Grok 4: 79.2 (#5)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | 1387 |
| IFEval | — | 94.9% |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
- Grok 4: 63.1 (#4)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | 1409 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 94.4% |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
- Grok 4: 58.5 (#116)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1411 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | 1397 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | 1416 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 76.9% |
| WildBench | — | 79.7% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Grok 4?

Grok 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.1 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 4.2 8B or Grok 4 better for coding?

Grok 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.3 versus 40.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Grok 4 share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Grok 4 has 48.