Model comparison
Granite 4.2 3b vs Mercury 2
Granite 4.2 3b and Mercury 2 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.0 vs 38.8), 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 Mercury 2 in 4 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 39.4 to 33.2.
- Granite 4.2 3b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Inception |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 38.8 |
| Released | — | 2026-02-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | 128K |
| Max output | — | 50K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.75 |
| Results tracked | 11 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146), Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1391 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1170 |
| SciCode | — | 38.7% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.2% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 785.58 |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136), Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1308 | 1362 |
| CritPt | — | 0.8% |
Knowledge Too close to call
Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169), Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1313 | 1358 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.3% |
Multilingual Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193), Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1331 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1268 | 1416 |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | 1303 |
Instruction Following Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195), Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1271 | 1328 |
Long Context Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179), Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1293 | 1329 |
Writing & Preference Mercury 2 leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202), Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1295 | 1355 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1215 | 1289 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1293 | 1358 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Mercury 2?
Granite 4.2 3b and Mercury 2 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.0 vs 38.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Granite 4.2 3b or Mercury 2 better for coding?
Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Mercury 2 share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.