# Granite 4.2 3B vs Ling 3.0 Flash

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and Ling 3.0 Flash across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-ling-3-0-flash
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

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

## Quick Verdict

Pick Ling 3.0 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Granite 4.2 3B only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Ling 3.0 Flash leads overall 47.51 to 43.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 37.7 for Granite 4.2 3B and 71.2 for Ling 3.0 Flash.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is GPQA in Knowledge, with scores of 54.8% and 85.0%.
- Ling 3.0 Flash is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Ling 3.0 Flash also has the larger context window at 262K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | Ling 3.0 Flash |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | InclusionAI |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Overall Score | null | 47.51 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 22 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | Pricing unavailable / Pricing unavailable |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ling 3.0 Flash public-lane score: 41.9 (Estimated · #108/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ling 3.0 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | 73.0% | Ling 3.0 Flash |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 65.5% | Coming soon |
| skillsBench | Coming soon | 44.8% | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | Coming soon | 73.6% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 72.2% | Coming soon |
| DRACO | Coming soon | 70.4% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 50.2% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ling 3.0 Flash public-lane score: 40.4 (Supported · #113/151)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ling 3.0 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | 24.1% | 41.2% | Ling 3.0 Flash |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 56.6% | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | Coming soon | 72.4% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v5 | Coming soon | 82.8% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 84.0% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 65.2% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Ling 3.0 Flash public-lane score: 71.2 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ling 3.0 Flash public-lane score: 44.6 (Supported · #113/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ling 3.0 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 85.0% | Ling 3.0 Flash |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 85.0% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 22.7% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 84.8% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 82.0% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ling 3.0 Flash public-lane score: 75.6 (#60/123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ling 3.0 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | 74.5% | Ling 3.0 Flash |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ling 3.0 Flash public-lane score: 73.7 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ling 3.0 Flash | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 93.2% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 87.0% | Coming soon |
| IMOAnswerBench | Coming soon | 83.7% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Granite 4.2 3B or Ling 3.0 Flash?

Ling 3.0 Flash is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Granite 4.2 3B and Ling 3.0 Flash?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 37.7 for Granite 4.2 3B and 71.2 for Ling 3.0 Flash.

### How many benchmarks does Granite 4.2 3B cover on BenchLM?

Granite 4.2 3B currently has 9 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Ling 3.0 Flash cover on BenchLM?

Ling 3.0 Flash currently has 22 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Ling 3.0 Flash vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-ling-3-0-flash)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Ling 3.0 Flash vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-ling-3-0-flash)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [Ling 3.0 Flash profile](/models/ling-3-0-flash)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)