Model comparison
Granite 4.2 3b vs Grok 4 Fast
Granite 4.2 3b and Grok 4 Fast score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.4 vs 39.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 3b scores higher in 3 categories and Grok 4 Fast in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where Grok 4 Fast leads 63.2 to 39.2.
- Granite 4.2 3b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | xAI |
| Noometry Index | 39.4 | 39.4 |
| Released | — | 2025-09-19 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Results tracked | 11 | 30 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 40.0 (#151), Grok 4 Fast: 32.5 (#271)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1361 | 1429 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1159 |
| WeirdML | — | 42.9% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Grok 4 Fast: 29.5 (#86)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 15.7% |
| Cybench | — | 30% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1171 |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 26.0 (#138), Grok 4 Fast: 22.2 (#201)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1306 | 1412 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 5.3% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 66.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 48.5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 144.2 |
| ForecastBench | — | 60.5 |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Grok 4 Fast: 38.9 (#123)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1419 |
Knowledge Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 36.3 (#171), Grok 4 Fast: 32.0 (#214)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1315 | 1411 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 19.7% |
Multilingual Grok 4 Fast leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 42.1 (#198), Grok 4 Fast: 51.3 (#111)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1396 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1269 | 1457 |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | 1389 |
| LMArena French | — | 1431 |
| LMArena German | — | 1383 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1352 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1357 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1415 |
Instruction Following Grok 4 Fast leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 67.1 (#200), Grok 4 Fast: 73.2 (#121)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1273 | 1387 |
Long Context Grok 4 Fast leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.2 (#185), Grok 4 Fast: 63.2 (#3)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1291 | 1415 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 94.4% |
Writing & Preference Grok 4 Fast leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 47.2 (#212), Grok 4 Fast: 60.0 (#102)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Grok 4 Fast |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1293 | 1407 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1205 | 1387 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1290 | 1414 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Grok 4 Fast?
Granite 4.2 3b and Grok 4 Fast score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.4 vs 39.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Granite 4.2 3b or Grok 4 Fast better for coding?
Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.0 versus 32.5 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Grok 4 Fast share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Grok 4 Fast has 30.