# Granite 4.2 8B vs Mercury 3

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

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-mercury-3
- Last updated: October 19, 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 Mercury 3 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.
- Mercury 3 has the larger published context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Inception |
| Type | Open Weight | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Independent public score (not head-to-head) | 33.13 | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 14 | 8 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.10 / $0.35 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 15.9 (Estimated · #116/130)
- Mercury 3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 20.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | 58.1% | 30.2% | Granite 4.2 8B |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp+ | Coming soon | 55.18% | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | Coming soon | 71.3% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 17.3 (Estimated · #126/151)
- Mercury 3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 47.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 19.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| 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 |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 46.3% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 55.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Mercury 3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MRCRv2 | Coming soon | 75.5% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 30.5 (Supported · #156/186)
- Mercury 3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 64.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 74.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 89.2% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 86.5 (#42/148)
- Mercury 3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 79.3% | 76.8% | Granite 4.2 8B |
| MultiChallenge (provider reports) | Coming soon | 60.35% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Mercury 3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Mercury 3 | 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 Mercury 3?

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)
- [Mercury 3 vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-mercury-3)
- [Granite 4.2 8B vs Granite 4.2 3B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Mercury 3 vs Granite 4.2 3B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-mercury-3)

## Explore More

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