Model comparison

DeepSeek-V3 vs Granite 4.2 3b

DeepSeek-V3 and Granite 4.2 3b score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.5 vs 39.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.

DeepSeek-V3 DeepSeek

39.5

Rank #166 Confirmed

Granite 4.2 3b IBM

39.4

Rank #169 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-V3 scores higher in 5 categories and Granite 4.2 3b in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where DeepSeek-V3 leads 57.4 to 47.2.

Side by side

DeepSeek-V3 and Granite 4.2 3b specifications
DeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
ProviderDeepSeekIBM
Noometry Index39.539.4
Released2024-12-26—
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window164K—
Max output164K—
Input $ / M tokens$0.24—
Output $ / M tokens$0.90—
Results tracked6011

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Category by category

Coding DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 42.3 (#106), Granite 4.2 3b: 40.0 (#151)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
LMArena Coding13681361
Aider Polyglot55.1%—
SciCode35.8%—
WeirdML36.1%—
BigCodeBench Instruct50%—
LiveBench Coding70.9%—
BigCodeBench Complete62.2%—
HumanEval+86.6%—
MBPP+73%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

DeepSeek-V3: —, Granite 4.2 3b: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
METR Time Horizons49.6%—

Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads

DeepSeek-V3: 20.5 (#236), Granite 4.2 3b: 26.0 (#138)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
LMArena Hard Prompts13651306
SimpleBench27.2%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark52.3%—
CritPt0%—
LiveBench Reasoning65.8%—
DTBench64.8%—
LiveBench Data Analysis60.9%—
LMCA15.5%—
BIG-Bench Hard87.5%—
Epoch Capabilities Index135.94—
ForecastBench59.1—
HellaSwag88.9%—
LiveBench66.9%—
PIQA84.7%—
WinoGrande85.2%—

Math Not comparable

DeepSeek-V3: 32.1 (#219), Granite 4.2 3b: —

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202537.8%—
Omni-MATH40.3%—
LiveBench Math73.5%—
LMArena Math1373—
MATH Level 575.5%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)1.7%—

Knowledge DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 37.5 (#155), Granite 4.2 3b: 36.3 (#171)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
LMArena Expert13511315
GPQA Diamond67.6%—
MMLU-Pro72.3%—
Confabulations26.1%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate6.1%—
GPQA (HELM)53.8%—
ARC (AI2) Challenge95.3%—
MMLU87.2%—
TriviaQA82.9%—

Multilingual DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 48.5 (#143), Granite 4.2 3b: 42.1 (#198)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
LMArena Non-English13581268
LMArena Chinese13911269
LMArena Russian13731249
LMArena French1385—
LMArena German1374—
LMArena Japanese1333—
LMArena Korean1319—
LMArena Spanish1358—

Instruction Following DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 72.8 (#130), Granite 4.2 3b: 67.1 (#200)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
LMArena Instruction Following13451273
LiveBench Instruction Following81.5%—
IFEval83.2%—

Long Context Granite 4.2 3b leads

DeepSeek-V3: 34.0 (#253), Granite 4.2 3b: 39.2 (#185)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
LMArena Longer Query13521291
Fiction.LiveBench50%—

Writing & Preference DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 57.4 (#130), Granite 4.2 3b: 47.2 (#212)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Granite 4.2 3b
LMArena Text13751293
LMArena Creative Writing13641205
LMArena Multi-Turn13891290
Short-Story Creative Writing77%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1472—
WildBench83%—
LiveBench Language49.1%—

Frequently asked questions

Is DeepSeek-V3 better than Granite 4.2 3b?

DeepSeek-V3 and Granite 4.2 3b score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.5 vs 39.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Is DeepSeek-V3 or Granite 4.2 3b better for coding?

DeepSeek-V3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.3 versus 40.0 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-V3 and Granite 4.2 3b share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-V3 has 60 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 3b has 11.

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