# Granite 4.2 8B vs Grok 4.20

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 8B and Grok 4.20 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-grok-4-20-beta
- Last updated: October 15, 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 8B and Grok 4.20 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.
- Granite 4.2 8B has the lower published output-token price.
- Grok 4.20 has the larger published context window at 2M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4.20 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | xAI |
| Type | Open Weight | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 2M |
| Independent public score (not head-to-head) | 33.4 | 57.64 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 14 | 24 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $1.25 / $2.50 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 15.7 (Estimated · #113/127)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 25.2 (Supported · #102/127)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 20.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | 58.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 47.1% | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | Coming soon | 62.8% | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | Coming soon | 38.36% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 44.2% | Coming soon |
| MazeBench | Coming soon | 0% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 17.2 (Estimated · #125/150)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 21.5 (Supported · #118/150)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 47.7% | 76.7% | Grok 4.20 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 19.1% | 51.8% | Grok 4.20 |
| SWE Multilingual | 30.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 20.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 73.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | 36.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench Pro | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | Coming soon | 4.06% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 84.3% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 72.2% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 56.8 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 44.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 53.3% | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-3 | Coming soon | 0.1% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 53.4 (#47/54)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 75.2% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 60.9% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 54.1% | Coming soon |
| SimpleVQA | Coming soon | 57.4% | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (MM) | Coming soon | 65.8% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 30.6 (Supported · #154/184)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 52.9 (Supported · #69/184)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 64.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 74.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 88.5% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 31.6% | Coming soon |
| HealthBench Hard | Coming soon | 20.3% | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (Text) | Coming soon | 50.2% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 88.6% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 86.3% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 86.5 (#41/146)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 79.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 86.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Is there enough evidence to pick between Granite 4.2 8B and Grok 4.20?

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 8B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Grok 4.20 vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-grok-4-20-beta)
- [Granite 4.2 8B vs Granite 4.2 3B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Grok 4.20 vs Granite 4.2 3B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-grok-4-20-beta)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 8B profile](/models/granite-4-2-8b)
- [Grok 4.20 profile](/models/grok-4-20-beta)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)