# Granite 4.2 3B vs ZAYA1-8B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and ZAYA1-8B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-zaya1-8b
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

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

## Quick Verdict

Pick ZAYA1-8B 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

- ZAYA1-8B leads overall 58 to 43.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is IFBench in Instruction Following, with scores of 74.3% and 52.6%.
- ZAYA1-8B also has the larger context window at 131K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | ZAYA1-8B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Zyphra |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 131K |
| Overall Score | null | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 11 |
| 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
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 45.7 (Estimated · #80/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | 39.2% | Granite 4.2 3B |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | 65.8% | Granite 4.2 3B |
| SciCode | 24.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: Coming soon

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 43.3 (Estimated · #118/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 71% | ZAYA1-8B |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | 74.2% | ZAYA1-8B |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 71.0% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 35.6 (#110/123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | 52.6% | Granite 4.2 3B |
| IFEval | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- ZAYA1-8B public-lane score: 62.6 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | ZAYA1-8B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 89.1% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 71.6% | Coming soon |
| IMOAnswerBench | Coming soon | 59.3% | Coming soon |
| Apex | Coming soon | 32.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Granite 4.2 3B or ZAYA1-8B?

ZAYA1-8B 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 ZAYA1-8B cover on BenchLM?

ZAYA1-8B currently has 11 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)
- [ZAYA1-8B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-zaya1-8b)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [ZAYA1-8B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-zaya1-8b)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [ZAYA1-8B profile](/models/zaya1-8b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)