IBM Granite 4.2 8B vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B): Specs & Benchmark Comparison

IBM Granite 4.2 8B is developed by IBM, while Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) comes from NVIDIA. Both were released in August 2026. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is the larger model at roughly 30 billion parameters, against 8 billion for IBM Granite 4.2 8B.

The two models share 7 published benchmarks. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) leads on 5 of them, IBM Granite 4.2 8B on 2. The widest gaps are on GPQA, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) scores 75.0% against 64.1%; SWE-bench Multilingual, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) scores 39.3% against 30.8%. Averaged across everything we track, IBM Granite 4.2 8B sits at 56.7% and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) at 45.3%.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) is available through an API at $0.05 per million input tokens with a 262K-token context window. We do not track a hosted API for IBM Granite 4.2 8B, so pricing and context cannot be compared directly.

IBM logo
IBM Granite 4.2 8B
IBM
NVIDIA logo
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
NVIDIA
CharacteristicIBM Granite 4.2 8BNemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
CompanyIBMNVIDIA
Release DateAugust 25, 2026August 11, 2026
Parameters8B30B
MultimodalNoNo
Context (input)—262K
Context (output)—262K
Input Price / 1M—$0.05
Output Price / 1M—$0.20
Average Score56.7%45.3%
Benchmarks
GPQA64.1%75.0%
SWE-bench Multilingual30.8%39.3%
MMLU-Pro74.0%82.0%
IFBench79.3%72.0%
Terminal-Bench 2.120.6%24.6%
SWE-Bench Verified47.7%51.6%
SciCode36.1%32.6%

Visual Benchmark Comparison

IBM Granite 4.2 8B
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
GPQA0.6 vs 0.8
0.6
0.8
SWE-bench Multilingual0.3 vs 0.4
0.3
0.4
MMLU-Pro0.7 vs 0.8
0.7
0.8
IFBench0.8 vs 0.7
0.8
0.7
Terminal-Bench 2.10.2 vs 0.2
0.2
0.2
SWE-Bench Verified0.5 vs 0.5
0.5
0.5
SciCode0.4 vs 0.3
0.4
0.3

Verdict

IBM Granite 4.2 8B leads in 1 out of 3 comparison categories.

Overall Performance

Both models show comparable average scores: IBM Granite 4.2 8B — 0.6, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5.

Programming

On SWE-Bench, both models are nearly equal: IBM Granite 4.2 8B — 0.5, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) — 0.5.

Recency

IBM Granite 4.2 8B is newer: released 8/25/2026 vs 8/11/2026.

More About These Models

IBM logo
IBM Granite 4.2 8B
IBM — specs, benchmarks, API
NVIDIA logo
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)
NVIDIA — specs, benchmarks, API

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Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better for coding — IBM Granite 4.2 8B or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
On the SWE-Bench benchmark, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) shows a better result: 51.6% vs 47.7%.
Which model is cheaper — IBM Granite 4.2 8B or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
API pricing data is available on the individual model pages.
Which has a larger context window — IBM Granite 4.2 8B or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B)?
Context window data is available on the individual model pages.

The IBM Granite 4.2 8B and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) 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 8B or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning (30B A3B) page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.