# Granite 4.2 3B vs MAI-Thinking-1

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and MAI-Thinking-1 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-mai-thinking-1
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 5
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick MAI-Thinking-1 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

- MAI-Thinking-1 leads overall 52 to 43.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is GPQA in Knowledge, with scores of 54.8% and 84.2%.
- MAI-Thinking-1 also has the larger context window at 256K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | MAI-Thinking-1 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Microsoft |
| Type | Open Weight | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 256K |
| Overall Score | null | 52 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 14 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | N/A |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 50.3 (Estimated · #50/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | MAI-Thinking-1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 46% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 50.4 (Estimated · #57/151)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | MAI-Thinking-1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | 87.7% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| SciCode | 24.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 52.8% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 46.0% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | MAI-Thinking-1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Graphwalks BFS 128K | Coming soon | 90% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 52.3 (Estimated · #66/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | MAI-Thinking-1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 84.2% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | 85% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 84.2% | Coming soon |
| SimpleQA | Coming soon | 31% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 94.7 (#1/123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | MAI-Thinking-1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | 85% | MAI-Thinking-1 |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- MAI-Thinking-1 public-lane score: 73.4 (Unranked · 3 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | MAI-Thinking-1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | 97% | MAI-Thinking-1 |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 94.5% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 84.9% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Granite 4.2 3B or MAI-Thinking-1?

MAI-Thinking-1 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### 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 MAI-Thinking-1 cover on BenchLM?

MAI-Thinking-1 currently has 14 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)
- [MAI-Thinking-1 vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-mai-thinking-1)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [MAI-Thinking-1 vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-mai-thinking-1)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [MAI-Thinking-1 profile](/models/mai-thinking-1)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)