IBM Granite 4.2 30B vs Inkling: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
IBM Granite 4.2 30B is developed by IBM, while Inkling comes from Thinking Machines Lab. Inkling was released in July 2026, and IBM Granite 4.2 30B followed a month later in August 2026. Inkling is the larger model at roughly 975 billion parameters, against 30 billion for IBM Granite 4.2 30B.
The two models share 3 published benchmarks. Inkling leads on 3 of them. The widest gaps are on Terminal-Bench 2.1, where Inkling scores 63.8% against 29.2%; SWE-Bench Verified, where Inkling scores 77.6% against 57.0%. Averaged across everything we track, IBM Granite 4.2 30B sits at 62.4% and Inkling at 61.8%.
Inkling is available through an API at $0.95 per million input tokens with a 524K-token context window. We do not track a hosted API for IBM Granite 4.2 30B, so pricing and context cannot be compared directly.
| Characteristic | IBM Granite 4.2 30B | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| Company | IBM | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Release Date | August 25, 2026 | July 21, 2026 |
| Parameters | 30B | 975B |
| Multimodal | No | Yes |
| Context (input) | — | 524K |
| Context (output) | — | 524K |
| Input Price / 1M | — | $0.95 |
| Output Price / 1M | — | $4.05 |
| Average Score | 62.4% | 61.8% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 29.2% | 63.8% |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 57.0% | 77.6% |
| IFBench | 77.2% | 79.8% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
IBM Granite 4.2 30B leads in 1 out of 3 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: IBM Granite 4.2 30B — 0.6, Inkling — 0.6.
On SWE-Bench, both models are nearly equal: IBM Granite 4.2 30B — 0.6, Inkling — 0.8.
IBM Granite 4.2 30B is newer: released 8/25/2026 vs 7/21/2026.
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The IBM Granite 4.2 30B and Inkling 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 Inkling page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.