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Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

EXAONE 4.5 33B vs Granite 4.2 30B

EXAONE 4.5 33B and Granite 4.2 30B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Granite 4.2 30B leads on reach, risk and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

EXAONE 4.5 33BLG AI Research · Open-weight model C61/100#61 of 160 open-weight models Granite 4.2 30BIBM · Open-weight model C61/100#65 of 160 open-weight models

Which one, for what

EXAONE 4.5 33B C

Best for Researchers and students working on documents, Korean or multimodal agents who don't need commercial rights

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

Research and education only. No commercial use of the model or its output

Granite 4.2 30B C

Best for Agents that want a documented, signed, Apache 2.0 reasoning model with tool calling on a 24 GB card

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 65
  • Risk, 55 against 50
  • Documentation and upkeep, 87 against 50

Watch for

No safety results published for it

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 30B +37

EXAONE 4.5 33B 50

Model card 20, Uses (the quickstart's question answering, document and agent examples), limitations, the architecture, the parameters, the context, the languages (in the metadata) and a knowledge cut-off of December 2024 are all on the card. Training data 5, A knowledge cut-off and one line on excluding personal, harmful and biased content, with no sources or sizes. Last change 10, the main repository last changed on 6 July 2026 (dependencies moved to official releases), 127 days before this check, and the FP8 repository on 9 August, 93 days. Responsiveness 0, none of the 5 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (13 April to 4 May 2026) has a reply from an LGAI-EXAONE member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, EXAONE 4.0 and 4.0.1 stay in their own repositories and 4.5 came out in new ones, with no dated note on the older cards that we read. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture and the 262,144 tokens, and a July commit moved the dependencies to released versions. 20 + 5 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 50.

Granite 4.2 30B 87

Model card 17, Intended use (best for), limitations (ethical considerations and limitations), architecture, parameters (30B), context length (128K native) and 12 tested languages are on the card. Training data 20, IBM's disclosure file for the 30B lists the datasets used in pre-training and post-training as machine-readable metadata, and the card describes the three training stages. Last change 15, the last commit to the repository was on 4 September 2026, 67 days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 4 discussions that aren't pull requests (28 August to 3 November 2026), 3 have a reply from an ibm-granite member. Version policy 5, Granite 4.1 30B stays in its own repository and 4.2 came out in new ones. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture, the 131,072-token context and the thinking switch. 17 + 20 + 15 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 87.

Reach Granite 4.2 30B +25

EXAONE 4.5 33B 65

Memory 20, the smallest build at 4 bits is LG's IQ4_XS GGUF, 18.03 GB with the 2.57 GB projector, and 20.60 GB × 1.2 = 24.7 GB, within 32 GB. Without the projector, for text only, it would fit 24 GB. Runtimes 15, Released vLLM 0.33.0 has exaone4_5.py, Transformers 5.22.2 has the exaone4_5 model, and llama.cpp b12242 has the architecture, with LG's own GGUF. Three at 5 each. Builds 15, LG publishes GGUF at five quantised precisions, an AWQ build and an FP8 build. Terms 5, Research and educational use only. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for all four repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and no click-through, though the licence says downloading is acceptance. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps no inference provider to it, and the card names no API that serves it. 20 + 15 + 15 + 5 + 10 + 0 = 65.

Granite 4.2 30B 90

Memory 25, IBM's own 4-bit MLX build granite-4.2-30b-q4-mlx is 16.47 GB, and 16.47 GB × 1.2 = 19.8 GB, which fits 24 GB but not 16 GB. Its Q4_0 GGUF is 16.58 GB and Ollama's library build granite4.2:30b 18 GB, the same band. Runtimes 25, Released versions run the granite architecture in llama.cpp (granite, b12242), vLLM (GraniteForCausalLM in the v0.33.0 registry), SGLang (granite.py at v0.5.23), Transformers (v5.22.2) and Ollama (its own granite4.2 library entry, 30b tag). Builds 15, IBM publishes FP8, MXFP4 and NVFP4 safetensors builds, a GGUF repository with Q4_0 to Q8_0 and BF16 files, and 4-bit, 8-bit and BF16 MLX builds, so quantised builds at two precisions or more. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, an OSI-approved licence, with no use policy or other terms added on the card. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the BF16, FP8, MXFP4, NVFP4, GGUF and MLX repositories, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps one inference provider (DeepInfra, live), short of the two the line needs. 25 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 90.

Risk Granite 4.2 30B +5

EXAONE 4.5 33B 50

File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, the files sit in the LGAI-EXAONE organisation (LG AI Research on the Hub), which the card's GitHub repository shares a name with and the licence in the repository is LG's (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions: the limitation section lists inappropriate, biased, incorrect and outdated answers and tells users not to try to induce harmful output. Licence risk 5, 15 less 5 for field-of-use limits beyond the law (no commercial use, no building competing models) and 5 for terms the licensor can change or revoke (LG may amend the agreement at any time, and the licence is revocable). Security programme 0, no way to report a flaw on the card beyond a support contact, and www.lgresearch.ai has no security.txt. 25 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 5 + 0 = 50.

Granite 4.2 30B 55

File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, the files sit in the ibm-granite organisation, which IBM's Granite docs and the GitHub README link to (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, field-of-use limit, threshold or change clause, and the card's licence link resolves. Security programme 5, www.ibm.com/.well-known/security.txt names IBM PSIRT, read for the 3B listing on 4 November 2026 (5). 15 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 55.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runEXAONE 4.5 33BGranite 4.2 30BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256590Granite 4.2 30B +25
Risk20%205055Granite 4.2 30B +5
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%105087Granite 4.2 30B +37
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactEXAONE 4.5 33BGranite 4.2 30B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorLG AI ResearchIBM
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceEXAONE AI Model License Agreement 1.2 - NC (research and education only)Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-062026-09-04
Terms last updatednot read yetno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked

Verdicts

EXAONE 4.5 33B

A well-documented vision-language model with a full set of builds, tool calling, switchable reasoning, a 256K context and a stated knowledge cut-off. The licence decides whether you can use it: research and education only, output included, and LG can change the terms. Nothing answered on the repository and no safety results.

Granite 4.2 30B

IBM's largest reasoning cousin, with the same strengths as the 3B. It runs in every runtime we count from IBM's own builds on a 24 GB card, is signed, plain Apache 2.0, and comes with a disclosure of its training data. No safety results are published and structured output isn't documented.

Before you call either

EXAONE 4.5 33B

  1. Don't use it, or anything it writes, commercially. The licence covers the output too
  2. Serve it with vLLM and --reasoning-parser qwen3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser hermes
  3. Set enable_thinking false for a direct answer. Thinking is on by default
  4. Use temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and presence_penalty 1.5 in general, and temperature 0.6 with top_k 20 for documents and Korean
  5. For llama.cpp, load a projector file from LG's GGUF repository with the weights for image input
  6. Its knowledge stops at December 2024

Granite 4.2 30B

  1. Start it with ollama run granite4.2:30b, or llama-server -hf ibm-granite/granite-4.2-30b-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja
  2. With vLLM 0.32.0 or later leave out --reasoning-parser-plugin, since the parser is built in, and use --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. Thinking is on by default. Pass enable_thinking false to turn it off or low_effort true for short reasoning
  4. The context is 131,072 tokens. The card's 512K extension isn't documented
  5. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  6. IBM recommends Granite Guardian beside it to flag risky inputs and outputs

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, EXAONE 4.5 33B or Granite 4.2 30B?

EXAONE 4.5 33B and Granite 4.2 30B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Granite 4.2 30B leads on reach, risk and documentation and upkeep.

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