# Granite 4.2 30B vs Ling-3.0-tiny (slim)

> Granite 4.2 30B scores 61 (C) to Ling-3.0-tiny's 56.2 (C) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-ling-3-0-tiny.md (~9,700 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-ling-3-0-tiny.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-ling-3-0-tiny
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-10
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Granite 4.2 30B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ling-3.0-tiny's 56.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Ling-3.0-tiny leads on reach. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Granite 4.2 30B: C 61, rank #65 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-4-2-30b.min.md
- Ling-3.0-tiny: C 56.2, rank #117 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ling-3-0-tiny.min.md
- Granite 4.2 30B, good for Agents that want a documented, signed, Apache 2.0 reasoning model with tool calling on a 24 GB card Ahead on Risk, 55 against 50; Agent interface, 85 against 60; Documentation and upkeep, 87 against 56.
- Ling-3.0-tiny, good for Agents on a laptop or small GPU that want a fast local model for tool calls and short reasoning, under MIT Ahead on Reach, 95 against 90.

| Category | Granite 4.2 30B | Ling-3.0-tiny |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 90 | 95 |
| Risk (20%) | 55 | 50 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 60 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 87 | 56 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Granite 4.2 30B | Ling-3.0-tiny |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | IBM | inclusionAI (Ant Group) |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Last release | 2026-09-04 | 2026-08-31 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Documentation and upkeep, Granite 4.2 30B +31: 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 1…); Ling-3.0-tiny 56 (Model card 11, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't.)
- Agent interface, Granite 4.2 30B +25: Granite 4.2 30B 85 (Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, with roles, tools, tool responses, the thinking switch and low effort.); Ling-3.0-tiny 60 (Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository.)
- Reach, Ling-3.0-tiny +5: 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.); Ling-3.0-tiny 95 (Memory earns the full 30, since inclusionAI's own Q4_K_M GGUF is 4.8 GB, about 6 GB with a fifth added.)
- Risk, Granite 4.2 30B +5: Granite 4.2 30B 55 (File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25).); Ling-3.0-tiny 50 (File safety gets 15, safetensors and GGUF only, but the card's vLLM command runs the repository's config code with --trust-remote-code.)