Compare / Granite 4.2 3B vs Ministral 3 3B
Granite 4.2 3B vs Ministral 3 3B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Granite 4.2 3B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 54.8 vs 49.4, although their likely ranges overlap, so the lead is not certain. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Granite 4.2 3B wins 3 and Ministral 3 3B wins 0. Both need about 3.3 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Only Ministral 3 3B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.10 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted.
Pick Granite 4.2 3B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you need math and reasoning
Pick Ministral 3 3B if…
- you want a hosted API rather than running it yourself
- you work with long documents
- you need image input
Specifications
| Granite 4.2 3B | Ministral 3 3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 54.8 (likely 51–58) | 49.4 (likely 45–54) |
| Lab | IBM (Granite) · United States | Mistral AI · Europe |
| Released | 2026-08-07 | 2025-12-02 |
| Parameters | 3B (dense) | 3B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~3 GB | ~3.3 GB |
| Context window | 131K tokens | 256K tokens |
| Input | text | text, image |
| Reasoning | No thinking | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | $0.10 ($0.10 in, $0.10 out) |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 33.8K | 17.7K |
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 3B | Ministral 3 3B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 67.8 | ≈ 72 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 54.8 | 53.4 |
| AIME Math | 78.3 | 72.1 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 69.7 | 54.8 |
| IFBench Instruction following | 74.3 | — |
| BFCL Agentic | 52.4 | — |
| HMMT Math | 66.7 | — |
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 3B or Ministral 3 3B?
Granite 4.2 3B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 54.8 vs 49.4, although their likely ranges overlap, so the lead is not certain. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Granite 4.2 3B wins 3 and Ministral 3 3B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Only Ministral 3 3B has a hosted API on OpenRouter ($0.10 per million tokens); the other has to be self-hosted. Both need about 3.3 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Ministral 3 3B has the longer context window: 256K tokens against 131K.
Can I use Granite 4.2 3B and Ministral 3 3B commercially?
Both are released under the Apache-2.0 license. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.