# Granite 4.2 8B vs Mistral Medium

> Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-mistral-medium
- 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 3 categories and Mistral Medium in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 38.4 to 25.0.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium.
- Mistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 36.3 |
| Rank | 148 | 218 |
| Context | 131K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $0.25 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
- Mistral Medium: 34.2 (#243)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1434 |
| FrontierCode | — | 8% |
| SciCode | — | 40.2% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 763.98 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Mistral Medium: 28.3 (#90)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.7% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
- Mistral Medium: 24.0 (#167)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1426 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 50% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| DTBench | — | 75.5% |
| LMCA | — | 26.1% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 26.9% |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Mistral Medium: 28.1 (#245)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 32.2% |
| ProofBench | — | 9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1408 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 81.6% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 0.3% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
- Mistral Medium: 25.0 (#265)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | 1408 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 59.5% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 4.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 22.7% |

## Multimodal

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Mistral Medium: 35.3 (#88)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1172 |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
- Mistral Medium: 52.1 (#91)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | 1408 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1447 |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | 1411 |
| LMArena French | — | 1459 |
| LMArena German | — | 1432 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1378 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1380 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1433 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
- Mistral Medium: 73.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | 1398 |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
- Mistral Medium: 42.9 (#114)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | 1406 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
- Mistral Medium: 60.0 (#103)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1424 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | 1391 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | 1418 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 77.3% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Mistral Medium?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 36.3 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Mistral Medium?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Is Granite 4.2 8B or Mistral Medium better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 34.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral Medium share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium has 36.