Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 3B vs Inkling 2 Small
Granite 4.2 3B scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on risk. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.
Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6472 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Agents on small hardware that want a permissive reasoning model for tool calls and coding, with thinking they can switch off
Ahead on
- Reach, 95 against 40
- Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 67
Watch for
No safety results published for 4.2, and only general safety cautions
Best for Teams with 512 GB or more of datacentre GPU memory who want Thinking Machines' newest open multimodal agent model and can run a runtime's pre-release image.
Ahead on
- Risk, 65 against 55
Watch for
The smaller checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and Thinking Machines says 500 GB of GPU memory
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.
Reach Granite 4.2 3B +55
Granite 4.2 3B 95
Memory earns the full 30, since IBM's 4-bit MLX build is 2.07 GB and Ollama's Q4_K_M build 2.2 GB, about 2.5 to 2.6 GB with the fifth added. Five named runtimes run the granite architecture in released versions or their own libraries, so runtimes take the cap of 25, though LM Studio has no 4.2 entry. IBM's FP8, FP4, GGUF and MLX builds earn 15. Apache 2.0 with nothing added gives terms 15 and the ungated repositories download 10. Hosted too is 0, since only DeepInfra serves it and watsonx.ai stops at 4.1.
Inkling 2 Small 40
Memory 0 of 30, the smallest build is Thinking Machines' NVFP4 checkpoint at 393.5 GB, about 472 GB with a fifth added, above the 256 GB line. Runtimes 0, no released version of the six runs it; vLLM and SGLang serve it from their own images and Transformers has it on its main branch only. Builds 15, two precisions from the publisher (NVFP4 and MXFP8). Terms 10, Apache 2.0 with a binding acceptable use policy on top, read as a custom licence. Download 10, no gate. Hosted 5, Thinking Machines' own Tinker serves it as beta serverless inference, and Together is live on Hugging Face. 0 + 0 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 40.
Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 3B +25
Granite 4.2 3B 92
The card covers everything but a knowledge cut-off (17). IBM's disclosure lists the datasets with sources and sizes (20). The index file changed on 20 October 2026, 15 days before this check, and nothing in IBM's 4.2 repositories or the GitHub repository changed since (20). The two questions asked on IBM's 3B repositories have an IBM reply, and no new thread was opened after 21 October (20). Granite 4.1 3B stays in its own repository with no note (5), and the files agree with each other (10).
Inkling 2 Small 67
Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off. Training data 15, an EU training-content summary with sources, mix, an October 2026 collection cut-off and filtering. Last change 20, the files were uploaded on 12 November 2026. Responsiveness 0, the repository has no questions yet, which reads as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 10, the files agree and no broken-file report waits. 17 + 15 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 67.
Risk Inkling 2 Small +10
Granite 4.2 3B 55
File safety gets 15 of 25, safetensors only, less 10 because the card's vLLM command loads the repository's parser plugin. Provenance gets 15 for files in IBM's own organisation with hashes and a sigstore signature. Safety evaluation is 0, since 4.2 publishes no safety results. Agent guidance gets 5 for general cautions and the advice to add Granite Guardian. Apache 2.0 keeps licence risk at 15, and IBM's security.txt gives 5 of the security programme's 10.
Inkling 2 Small 65
File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code to run. Provenance 15, the files are in the organisation Thinking Machines links to, with a SHA-256 on every LFS file. Safety evaluation 10, Thinking Machines' own StrongREJECT, FORTRESS, HoneyBench and DistressBench results and described outside red-teaming, but nothing an outside party published or a harness to rerun. Agent guidance 5, the card names safeguards to add but doesn't say what its refusals cover, with nothing on prompt injection. Licence risk 5, 10 off for a use policy that reaches beyond the law and that can change at any time. Security programme 5, a security.txt and a disclosure policy, with public advisories unchecked and scored as absent. 25 + 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 65.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Granite 4.2 3B | Inkling 2 Small | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 95 | 40 | Granite 4.2 3B +55 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 65 | Inkling 2 Small +10 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 92 | 67 | Granite 4.2 3B +25 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 59.8/100 | C 58.8/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 3B | Inkling 2 Small |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | IBM | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-20 | 2026-11-12 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (4) | none |
How the scores have moved
Granite 4.2 3B
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Granite 4.2 3B
A small reasoning model for tool calls, coding and multilingual chat, published by IBM under plain Apache 2.0 with signed files and a dataset disclosure, and run by llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers from a 2.2 GB Ollama build. Thinking turns off or shortens per request. It has no published safety results and no documented JSON mode.
Inkling 2 Small
Thinking Machines' newest open model, a 594B mixture-of-experts generalist with images in, several tool calls a turn and per-request thinking effort. The NVFP4 checkpoint needs about 472 GB, and no released runtime runs it yet, so today that means vLLM's or SGLang's own images, or Tinker and Together hosted. The use policy binds on download and can change.
Before you call either
Granite 4.2 3B
- Start it with
ollama run granite4.2:3b; set options.num_ctx in the request, since Ollama's default context is short and the model takes up to 131,072 - With vLLM 0.32.0 or later, serve
ibm-granite/granite-4.2-3bwith--reasoning-parser granite_thinking_parser --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --enable-auto-tool-choice; that release has the parser built in, so the card's--reasoning-parser-plugin ./granite_thinking_parser.pyisn't needed - With SGLang 0.5.18 or later,
--reasoning-parser auto --tool-call-parser autoresolve to IBM's recommended parsers, and the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content - Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for every mode, as IBM requires
- Pass
enable_thinkingfalse for direct answers orlow_efforttrue for short reasoning, through chat_template_kwargs on an OpenAI-compatible server - Earlier turns' thinking is stripped by default (
truncate_history_thinking), so pass it false to keep reasoning in multi-turn history - For JSON, use the runtime's guided decoding, since IBM documents no JSON mode for 4.2
- Verify the files with
python -m model_signing verify sigstoreand IBM's identity, per IBM's signature guide
Inkling 2 Small
- No released runtime runs it yet. Serve the NVFP4 checkpoint from SGLang's dev-inkling-2-small image with the cookbook's recipe for your hardware, or from vLLM's vllm/vllm-openai:inkling-2-small image
- In vLLM pass
--reasoning-parser inkling --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser inkling. In SGLang the tool-call parser isinkling2and the reasoning parserinkling - Transformers' main branch loads only thinkingmachines/Inkling-2-Small-MXFP8, the 622.8 GB checkpoint, and no release has the code yet
- Pass
reasoning_effortas none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default), xhigh or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99 - Effort none conditions the model toward no reasoning but doesn't forbid it, and higher effort needs a larger max_tokens
- Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
- Images should be 40 to 4096 px a side. The model takes no audio, and the template raises an error for an audio part
- Use guided decoding or validate JSON yourself, since structured output isn't documented
- Without the hardware, call it on Tinker's OpenAI-compatible endpoint with a Tinker key, at $0.30 input and $1.00 output per million tokens as read on 6 November 2026
- Read the Model Acceptable Use Policy before deploying, it binds on download and bars some uses that are legal
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 3B or Inkling 2 Small?
Granite 4.2 3B scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Inkling 2 Small's 58.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Inkling 2 Small leads on risk.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-inkling-2-small.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/granite-4-2-3b.json·/api/v1/tools/inkling-2-small.json - From a terminal
anchor compare granite-4-2-3b inkling-2-small(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "granite-4-2-3b", "b": "inkling-2-small"}at/mcp, no key