# Granite 4.2 30B vs Ornith-1.5-9B (slim)

> Granite 4.2 30B and Ornith-1.5-9B score within a point of each other for open-weight models you run yourself, 61 and 61 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- 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
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Granite 4.2 30B and Ornith-1.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). Ornith-1.5-9B 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
- Ornith-1.5-9B: C 61, rank #51 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ornith-1-5-9b.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; Documentation and upkeep, 87 against 31.
- Ornith-1.5-9B, good for Local coding and terminal agents on a laptop or a single consumer GPU, where a clear licence file and an answering publisher aren't required Ahead on Reach, 95 against 90.

| Category | Granite 4.2 30B | Ornith-1.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 90 | 95 |
| Risk (20%) | 55 | 50 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 85 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 87 | 31 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Granite 4.2 30B | Ornith-1.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | IBM | Ornith |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Last release | 2026-09-04 | 2026-08-23 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Documentation and upkeep, Granite 4.2 30B +56: 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…); Ornith-1.5-9B 31 (Model card 11, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters and context but not limitations, languages or a knowledge cut-off.)
- Reach, Ornith-1.5-9B +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.); Ornith-1.5-9B 95 (Memory 30, since Ornith's own MLX 4-bit build is 5.0 GB and needs about 6.0 GB with the fifth added, and its Q4_K_M GGUF and Ollama's build fit 16 GB too.)
- Risk, Granite 4.2 30B +5: Granite 4.2 30B 55 (File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25).); Ornith-1.5-9B 50 (File safety 25, safetensors and GGUF only and no Python in any of Ornith's repositories, so the card's --trust-remote-code flag loads nothing from the repositor…)
