# Granite 4.2 30B vs Inkling

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 30B and Inkling across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-inkling
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 4
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Inkling if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Granite 4.2 30B only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Inkling leads overall 60.28 to 50.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 54.7 for Granite 4.2 30B and 74.1 for Inkling.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is GPQA in Knowledge, with scores of 66.4% and 87.9%.
- Granite 4.2 30B is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Inkling also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 30B | Inkling |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Overall Score | null | 60.28 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 14 | 21 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $1.87 / $4.68 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 30B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 38.3 (Supported · #122/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30B | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 29.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | 62.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 61.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 63.8% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 77.1% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 74.1% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 47.6% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 30B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 41.1 (Supported · #111/151)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30B | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE Multilingual | 41.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 33.3% | 54.3% | Inkling |
| SWE-bench Verified | 57% | 77.6% | Inkling |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 29.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 75.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | 38.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 63.8% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 4.1% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 85.5% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 77.6% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 30B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 49.2 (#38/48)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30B | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 82% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 78.1% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 30B public-lane score: 54.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Inkling public-lane score: 74.1 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 30B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 57.4 (Supported · #43/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30B | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 66.4% | 87.9% | Inkling |
| MMLU-Pro | 77.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 87.9% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 46% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 30% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 87.1% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 86.3% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 30B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 85.2 (#44/123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30B | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 77.2% | 79.8% | Inkling |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 30B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 78.9 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30B | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 97.1% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Granite 4.2 30B or Inkling?

Inkling is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Granite 4.2 30B and Inkling?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 54.7 for Granite 4.2 30B and 74.1 for Inkling.

### How many benchmarks does Granite 4.2 30B cover on BenchLM?

Granite 4.2 30B currently has 14 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Inkling cover on BenchLM?

Inkling currently has 21 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Granite 4.2 30B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Inkling vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-inkling)
- [Granite 4.2 30B vs Granite 4.2 3B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Inkling vs Granite 4.2 3B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-inkling)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 30B profile](/models/granite-4-2-30b)
- [Inkling profile](/models/inkling)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)