Model comparison

Granite 4.2 8B vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral Medium 3.5 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.5 vs 40.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 11 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 8B IBM

40.5

Rank #148 Confirmed

Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral AI

40.2

Rank #152 Confirmed

Summary

They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 8B scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Medium 3.5 in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 26.6 to 17.3.
Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.
Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral Medium 3.5 specifications
	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
Provider	IBM	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	40.5	40.2
Released	—	—
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	262K
Max output	118K	210K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.06	$1.50
Output $ / M tokens	$0.25	$7.50
Results tracked	11	22

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Category by category

Coding Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137), Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Coding	1380	1461
LMArena WebDev	—	1264

Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131), Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Hard Prompts	1329	1436
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	41.4%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	12.9%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	141.35

Math Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Math	—	1431

Knowledge Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145), Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Expert	1384	1432

Multimodal Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Vision	—	1223

Multilingual Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178), Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Non-English	1302	1404
LMArena Chinese	1366	1442
LMArena Russian	1285	1395
LMArena French	—	1448
LMArena German	—	1451
LMArena Korean	—	1385
LMArena Spanish	—	1409

Instruction Following Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184), Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Instruction Following	1301	1415

Long Context Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159), Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Longer Query	1324	1415

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189), Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Text	1320	1421
LMArena Creative Writing	1236	1374
LMArena Multi-Turn	1301	1423
EQ-Bench 4	—	993

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Mistral Medium 3.5?

Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral Medium 3.5 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.5 vs 40.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Mistral Medium 3.5?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Is Granite 4.2 8B or Mistral Medium 3.5 better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium 3.5 does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Mistral Medium 3.5 share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22.