# Granite 4.2 8B vs Mistral Small

> Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-mistral-small
- 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 4 categories and Mistral Small in 3 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 38.4 to 31.0.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 33.4 |
| Rank | 148 | 243 |
| Context | 131K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $0.25 | $0.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
- Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1362 |
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
- Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1335 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| DTBench | — | 70.9% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| LMCA | — | 20.6% |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1341 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
- Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | 1291 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
- Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1340 |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | 1324 |
| LMArena French | — | 1337 |
| LMArena German | — | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1259 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
- Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | 1327 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
- Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

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

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index.

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

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.

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

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

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

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

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.