# Granite 4.2 3B vs Ternary Bonsai 2 27B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and Ternary Bonsai 2 27B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-ternary-bonsai-2-27b
- Last updated: September 18, 2026

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

## Quick Verdict

Pick Ternary Bonsai 2 27B 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

- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B leads overall 50.78 to 43.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 37.7 for Granite 4.2 3B and 73.9 for Ternary Bonsai 2 27B.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is GPQA in Knowledge, with scores of 54.8% and 85.8%.
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B also has the larger context window at 262K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Prism ML |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Overall Score | null | 50.78 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 21 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B public-lane score: 49.9 (Estimated · #59/154)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| τ²-bench results | Coming soon | 80.2% | Coming soon |
| BFCL v3 | Coming soon | 74.9% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 52.8% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B public-lane score: 49.9 (Estimated · #64/154)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | 90.1% | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B |
| SciCode | 24.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BigCodeBench | Coming soon | 58.1% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 60.8% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 52.8% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv (overall) | Coming soon | 80.0% | Coming soon |
| A-OKVQA | Coming soon | 86.8% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.6 | Coming soon | 89.1% | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | Coming soon | 80.1% | Coming soon |
| OCRBench V2 | Coming soon | 56.9% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B public-lane score: 73.9 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B public-lane score: 50.6 (Estimated · #78/184)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 85.8% | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Redux | Coming soon | 89.1% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 85.8% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B public-lane score: 71 (#64/124)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | 74% | Granite 4.2 3B |
| IFEval | Coming soon | 91.3% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Ternary Bonsai 2 27B public-lane score: 76.8 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | 95% | Ternary Bonsai 2 27B |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GSM8K | Coming soon | 96.7% | Coming soon |
| MATH-500 | Coming soon | 98.8% | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 95.8% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Granite 4.2 3B or Ternary Bonsai 2 27B?

Ternary Bonsai 2 27B is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Granite 4.2 3B and Ternary Bonsai 2 27B?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 37.7 for Granite 4.2 3B and 73.9 for Ternary Bonsai 2 27B.

### 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 Ternary Bonsai 2 27B cover on BenchLM?

Ternary Bonsai 2 27B currently has 21 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)
- [Ternary Bonsai 2 27B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-ternary-bonsai-2-27b)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Ternary Bonsai 2 27B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-ternary-bonsai-2-27b)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [Ternary Bonsai 2 27B profile](/models/ternary-bonsai-2-27b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)