# Granite 4.2 3B vs Kimi K2.6

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and Kimi K2.6 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-kimi-2-6
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 3
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Evidence is too thin for a benchmark verdict: Granite 4.2 3B and Kimi K2.6 share only 3 sourced benchmark rows.

## Summary

- Only 3 shared sourced benchmark rows are available. That is not enough for a broad capability verdict, so this mirror does not name an overall winner.
- Granite 4.2 3B has the lower published output-token price.
- Kimi K2.6 has the larger published context window at 256K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | Kimi K2.6 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Moonshot AI |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 256K |
| Independent public score (not head-to-head) | null | 65.39 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 37 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.95 / $4.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 46.7 (Supported · #74/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 66.7% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 83.2% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | Coming soon | 73.1% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | Coming soon | 50% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 55.9% | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 62.3% | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | Coming soon | 92.5% | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | Coming soon | 80.8% | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | Coming soon | 56.82% | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | Coming soon | 18.0% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Coming soon | 4.6% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 53.6% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 50.8 (Supported · #52/151)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | 89.6% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SciCode | 24.1% | 52.2% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 80.2% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 58.6% | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | Coming soon | 76.7% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 66.7% | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | Coming soon | 37.89% | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | Coming soon | 47.6% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 86.8% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 76.2% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 64 (#26/48)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 79.4% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro w/ Python | Coming soon | 80.1% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 80.4% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 87.4% | Coming soon |
| V* | Coming soon | 96.9% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon

### Knowledge

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 61.5 (Supported · #32/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 90.5% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 90.5% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 34.7% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 89.1% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 87.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 71.3 (#1/7)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 96.4% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 92.7% | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | Coming soon | 86.0% | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | Coming soon | 38.966% | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | Coming soon | 14.580% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Is there enough evidence to pick between Granite 4.2 3B and Kimi K2.6?

Not yet. The models share only 3 sourced benchmark rows, so this mirror reports the available measurements and metadata without naming a broad winner.

### What can I compare safely on this page?

Published pricing, context windows, model type, and individual shared benchmark rows are directly comparable. Independent overall scores and non-overlapping benchmark coverage are labeled separately and should not be read as a controlled head-to-head result.

## Related Comparisons

- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Kimi K2.6 vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-kimi-2-6)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Kimi K2.6 vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-kimi-2-6)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [Kimi K2.6 profile](/models/kimi-2-6)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)