# Granite 4.2 3B vs Phi-3.5-mini

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and Phi-3.5-mini across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-phi-3-5-mini
- Last updated: October 14, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 2
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Evidence is too thin for a benchmark verdict: Granite 4.2 3B and Phi-3.5-mini share only 2 sourced benchmark rows.

## Summary

- Only 2 shared sourced benchmark rows are available. That is not enough for a broad capability verdict, so this mirror does not name an overall winner.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | Phi-3.5-mini |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Microsoft |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Independent public score (not head-to-head) | null | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 8 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | N/A |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Phi-3.5-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Phi-3.5-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Phi-3.5-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Phi-3.5-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | 24.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HumanEval | Coming soon | 62.8% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 42.5 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Phi-3.5-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Phi-3.5-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| BBH | Coming soon | 69% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Phi-3.5-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Phi-3.5-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 30.4% | Granite 4.2 3B |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | 47.4% | Granite 4.2 3B |
| MMLU | Coming soon | 69% | Coming soon |
| MMMLU | Coming soon | 55.4% | Coming soon |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Phi-3.5-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Phi-3.5-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MGSM | Coming soon | 47.9% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Phi-3.5-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Phi-3.5-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Phi-3.5-mini public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Phi-3.5-mini | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GSM8K | Coming soon | 86.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Is there enough evidence to pick between Granite 4.2 3B and Phi-3.5-mini?

Not yet. The models share only 2 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)
- [Phi-3.5-mini vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-phi-3-5-mini)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Phi-3.5-mini vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-phi-3-5-mini)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [Phi-3.5-mini profile](/models/phi-3-5-mini)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)