Compare / Granite 4.2 3B vs SmolLM3 3B
Granite 4.2 3B vs SmolLM3 3B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Granite 4.2 3B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 54.8 vs 30.4. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Granite 4.2 3B wins 3 and SmolLM3 3B wins 0. Both need about 3 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 3B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you need math and reasoning
- you work with long documents
Pick SmolLM3 3B if…
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Specifications
| Granite 4.2 3B | SmolLM3 3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 54.8 (likely 51–58) | 30.4 (likely 27–35) |
| Lab | IBM (Granite) · United States | Hugging Face (SmolLM) · Europe |
| Released | 2026-08-07 | 2025-07-08 |
| Parameters | 3B (dense) | 3.1B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~3 GB | ~3 GB |
| Context window | 131K tokens | 64K tokens |
| Input | text | text |
| Reasoning | No thinking | Hybrid (thinking on/off) |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 33.8K | 567.6K |
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 | SmolLM3 3B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 67.8 | ≈ 58 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 54.8 | 41.7 |
| AIME Math | 78.3 | 36.7 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 69.7 | 30.0 |
| IFBench Instruction following | 74.3 | — |
| Multilingual MMLU Multilingual | — | 64.1 |
| IFEval Instruction following | — | 71.2 |
| 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 SmolLM3 3B?
Granite 4.2 3B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 54.8 vs 30.4. On the 3 benchmarks both labs report, Granite 4.2 3B wins 3 and SmolLM3 3B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 3 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Granite 4.2 3B has the longer context window: 131K tokens against 64K.
Can I use Granite 4.2 3B and SmolLM3 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.