Compare / Granite 4.2 30B vs North Mini Code
Granite 4.2 30B vs North Mini Code
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Granite 4.2 30B and North Mini Code are roughly tied on the Small LM Index (65.8 vs 64.7). On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, Granite 4.2 30B wins 3 and North Mini Code wins 2. Both need about 21.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Granite 4.2 30B if…
- you need precise instruction following
- you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Pick North Mini Code if…
- you mostly write code
- you work with long documents
Specifications
| Granite 4.2 30B | North Mini Code | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 65.8 (likely 64–67) | 64.7 (likely 55–72) |
| Lab | IBM (Granite) · United States | Cohere · Other |
| Released | 2026-08-07 | 2026-06-17 |
| Parameters | 30B (dense) | 30B (3B active, MoE) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~21.4 GB | ~21.4 GB |
| Context window | 131K tokens | 256K tokens |
| Input | text | text |
| Reasoning | No thinking | No thinking |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Unverified |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 32.4K | — |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30B | North Mini Code |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 77.6 | ≈ 82 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 64.4✓ | 75.7✓ |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 11.2✓ | 11.1✓ |
| AIME Math | 89.2 | ≈ 89 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 75.8 | ≈ 75 |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 29.2 | — |
| τ²-Bench Agentic | — | 37.4✓ |
| IFBench Instruction following | 77.2 | 57.6✓ |
| BFCL Agentic | 61.4 | — |
| HMMT Math | 89.2 | — |
| AA-LCR Long context | 49.0✓ | 37.3✓ |
| SciCode Coding | 37.8✓ | 38.8✓ |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Granite 4.2 30B or North Mini Code?
Granite 4.2 30B and North Mini Code are roughly tied on the Small LM Index (65.8 vs 64.7). On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, Granite 4.2 30B wins 3 and North Mini Code wins 2.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 21.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
North Mini Code has the longer context window: 256K tokens against 131K.
Can I use Granite 4.2 30B and North Mini Code commercially?
Granite 4.2 30B is released under Apache-2.0 and North Mini Code under Unverified. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.