# Granite 4.2 8B vs o3-mini

> Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-o3-mini
- 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 o3-mini in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 26.6 to 16.3.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- o3-mini accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 36.7 |
| Rank | 148 | 212 |
| Context | 131K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $1.10 |
| Output $/M | $0.25 | $4.40 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
- o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1378 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| CadEval | — | 54% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
- o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1366 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| LMCA | — | 19% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 140.34 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 76.9% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1396 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
- o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | 1364 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
- o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1379 |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | 1304 |
| LMArena French | — | 1334 |
| LMArena German | — | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1314 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1321 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
- o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | 1337 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
- o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
- o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | 1320 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 8B better than o3-mini?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or o3-mini?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

### Is Granite 4.2 8B or o3-mini better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (40.5 vs 40.8); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

o3-mini does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and o3-mini share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.