IBM Granite 4.2 30B vs IBM Granite 4.2 3B: Specs & Benchmark Comparison

IBM Granite 4.2 30B and IBM Granite 4.2 3B both come from IBM, and both were released in August 2026. IBM Granite 4.2 30B is the larger model at roughly 30 billion parameters, against 3 billion for IBM Granite 4.2 3B.

The two models share 13 published benchmarks. IBM Granite 4.2 30B leads on 13 of them. The widest gaps are on Arena-Hard v2, where IBM Granite 4.2 30B scores 67.9% against 35.0%; RULER 128k, where IBM Granite 4.2 30B scores 81.4% against 55.3%. Averaged across everything we track, IBM Granite 4.2 30B sits at 62.4% and IBM Granite 4.2 3B at 55.7%.

IBM Granite 4.2 3B is available through an API at $0.03 per million input tokens with a 131K-token context window. We do not track a hosted API for IBM Granite 4.2 30B, so pricing and context cannot be compared directly.

IBM logo
IBM Granite 4.2 30B
IBM
IBM logo
IBM Granite 4.2 3B
IBM
CharacteristicIBM Granite 4.2 30BIBM Granite 4.2 3B
CompanyIBMIBM
Release DateAugust 25, 2026August 25, 2026
Parameters30B3B
MultimodalNoNo
Context (input)—131K
Context (output)—131K
Input Price / 1M—$0.03
Output Price / 1M—$0.12
Average Score62.4%55.7%
Benchmarks
Arena-Hard v267.9%35.0%
RULER 128k81.4%55.3%
HMMT2589.2%66.7%
RULER 64k90.0%67.5%
TAU3-Bench62.0%45.8%
SciCode38.8%24.1%
GPQA66.4%54.8%
AIME 202589.2%78.3%
ProfBench42.9%32.1%
MMLU-Pro77.6%67.8%
BFCL-V461.4%52.4%
LiveCodeBench v675.8%69.7%
IFBench77.2%74.3%

Visual Benchmark Comparison

IBM Granite 4.2 30B
IBM Granite 4.2 3B
Arena-Hard v20.7 vs 0.3
0.7
0.3
RULER 128k0.8 vs 0.6
0.8
0.6
HMMT250.9 vs 0.7
0.9
0.7
RULER 64k0.9 vs 0.7
0.9
0.7
TAU3-Bench0.6 vs 0.5
0.6
0.5
SciCode0.4 vs 0.2
0.4
0.2
GPQA0.7 vs 0.5
0.7
0.5
AIME 20250.9 vs 0.8
0.9
0.8
ProfBench0.4 vs 0.3
0.4
0.3
MMLU-Pro0.8 vs 0.7
0.8
0.7
BFCL-V40.6 vs 0.5
0.6
0.5
LiveCodeBench v60.8 vs 0.7
0.8
0.7
IFBench0.8 vs 0.7
0.8
0.7

Verdict

Both models show equal results — the choice depends on your specific use case.

Overall Performance

Both models show comparable average scores: IBM Granite 4.2 30B — 0.6, IBM Granite 4.2 3B — 0.6.

Recency

Both models were released around the same time: 8/25/2026 and 8/25/2026.

More About These Models

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IBM Granite 4.2 30B
IBM — specs, benchmarks, API
IBM logo
IBM Granite 4.2 3B
IBM — specs, benchmarks, API

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Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better for coding — IBM Granite 4.2 30B or IBM Granite 4.2 3B?
Direct comparison on the SWE-Bench benchmark is not available. We recommend reviewing other metrics on the comparison page.
Which model is cheaper — IBM Granite 4.2 30B or IBM Granite 4.2 3B?
API pricing data is available on the individual model pages.
Which has a larger context window — IBM Granite 4.2 30B or IBM Granite 4.2 3B?
Context window data is available on the individual model pages.

The IBM Granite 4.2 30B and IBM Granite 4.2 3B comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the IBM Granite 4.2 30B or IBM Granite 4.2 3B page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.