Model comparison

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct vs o4-mini

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 31.1 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct IBM

31.1

Rank #266 Confirmed

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #119 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct scores higher in 0 categories and o4-mini in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where o4-mini leads 54.2 to 31.2.
  • Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and o4-mini specifications
Granite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
ProviderIBMOpenAI
Noometry Index31.141.6
Released—2025-04-16
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window—200K
Max output—100K
Input $ / M tokens—$1.10
Output $ / M tokens—$4.40
Results tracked1460

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Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#297), o4-mini: 41.6 (#110)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Coding11131369
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—45%
Aider Polyglot—72%
GSO—3.6%
WeirdML—52.6%
BigCodeBench Instruct29.3%—
BigCodeBench Complete35.4%—
CadEval—62%
ALE-Bench—826.17
AlgoTune—1.72

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: —, o4-mini: 32.3 (#57)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—53.2%
GDPval—25.3%
METR Time Horizons—63.9%

Reasoning o4-mini leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 20.0 (#227), o4-mini: 24.6 (#143)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Hard Prompts10921351
ARC-AGI-2—6.1%
SimpleBench—38.7%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—67.6%
ARC-AGI-1—58.7%
CritPt—0.6%
Chess Puzzles—26%
EnigmaEval—9.2%
Mystery Game Puzzles—5%
DTBench—77.6%
LMCA—26.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index—145.63
ForecastBench—61.8

Math o4-mini leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 30.3 (#211), o4-mini: 40.2 (#79)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Math11431390
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—36.1%
FrontierMath Tier 4—4.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—81.7%
Omni-MATH—72%
MATH Level 5—97.8%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—24.8%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—6.3%

Knowledge o4-mini leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#233), o4-mini: 43.5 (#83)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Expert10871344
GPQA Diamond—79.6%
Humanity's Last Exam—18.1%
SimpleQA Verified—19.6%
MMLU-Pro—82%
Confabulations—15.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—18.6%
GPQA (HELM)—73.5%

Multimodal Not comparable

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: —, o4-mini: 39.5 (#46)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Vision—1194
GeoBench—64%
VPCT—57.5%

Multilingual o4-mini leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 27.4 (#271), o4-mini: 47.2 (#149)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Non-English10371336
LMArena Chinese10631355
LMArena Russian10601334
LMArena French—1362
LMArena German—1336
LMArena Japanese—1308
LMArena Korean—1313
LMArena Spanish—1346

Instruction Following o4-mini leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 56.2 (#271), o4-mini: 75.4 (#63)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Instruction Following10881321
IFEval—92.8%

Long Context o4-mini leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 34.0 (#247), o4-mini: 45.5 (#31)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Longer Query11221315
Fiction.LiveBench—77.8%

Writing & Preference o4-mini leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 31.2 (#280), o4-mini: 54.2 (#148)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b Instructo4-mini
LMArena Text10961353
LMArena Creative Writing10711294
LMArena Multi-Turn10631350
Short-Story Creative Writing—75%
WildBench—85.4%

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct better than o4-mini?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 31.1 on the Noometry Index.

Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct or o4-mini better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.6 versus 29.1 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and o4-mini share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has 14 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.

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