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

Granite 4.2 3B vs MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL

MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Granite 4.2 3B's 59.8 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Granite 4.2 3B 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

Which one, for what

Granite 4.2 3B C

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 65
  • Risk, 55 against 45
  • Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 59

Watch for

No safety results published for 4.2, and only general safety cautions

MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL C

Best for Teams with a GPU server, or a provider account, that want an open agent model with a very long context

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

Watch for

178 GB at 4 bits, so it needs about 200 GB of 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.

Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 3B +33

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).

MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL 59

Model card 14, Intended use, the architecture, the parameters, the context and the languages (in the metadata) are on the card. Training data 5, A description of the training method with no data sources, sizes or cut-off. Last change 20, the last commits, on 28 October 2026, updated the card, 13 days before this check. Responsiveness 5, Of the 13 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (21 September to 6 November 2026), 3 have a reply from a XiaomiMiMo member, which is a few. Version policy 5, MiMo-V2.5 stays in its own repositories and V2.6 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 1M context, and two early faults (invalid JSON in the draft model's config, preprocessor values) were fixed in commits that say so. 14 + 5 + 20 + 5 + 5 + 10 = 59.

Reach Granite 4.2 3B +30

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.

MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL 65

Memory 5, the smallest build at 4 bits or better is ggml-org's MXFP4 GGUF, 168.93 GB with its projector, and 168.93 GB × 1.2 = 202.7 GB, within 256 GB. Xiaomi's own files are 177.74 GB. ggml-org's Q2_K is below 4 bits and isn't read. Runtimes 20, Released vLLM 0.33.0 and SGLang 0.5.23 have the mimo_v2 model and the mimo parsers, Transformers 5.22.2 has a mimo_v2_flash model, and llama.cpp b12242 has the architecture, with a GGUF from its own organisation. Builds 10, one precision from Xiaomi, the 4-bit files it releases. Terms 15, MIT in the card's metadata, an OSI licence. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 5, the card says it is on Xiaomi's MiMo Open Platform API and on OpenRouter, and Novita is live for it on Hugging Face. 5 + 20 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 65.

Risk Granite 4.2 3B +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.

MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL 45

File safety 5, the weights are safetensors, but the dflash folder's mask_embedding.pt is a pickle beside them (15). Provenance 15, the files sit in the XiaomiMiMo organisation, which mimo.xiaomi.com links to per the Distill listing (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions only. Licence risk 15, MIT has no use policy, threshold or change clause. Security programme 5, Xiaomi runs a company security centre for reporting flaws, as read for the Distill listing (5). 5 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 45.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGranite 4.2 3BMiMo-V2.6-Flash-RLEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259565Granite 4.2 3B +30
Risk20%205545Granite 4.2 3B +10
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%109259Granite 4.2 3B +33
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59.8/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactGranite 4.2 3BMiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorIBMXiaomi (MiMo team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT (metadata only, no LICENSE file)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-202026-10-28
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviews3.8/5 (4)none

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.

MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL

A large agent model with an open licence: text, images, video and audio, a 1M context, tool calling it was trained for, and code in four released runtimes. It's a server model, 178 GB at 4 bits, and the card's commands run the repository's code. No safety results, little said about data, and few questions answered.

Before you call either

Granite 4.2 3B

  1. 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
  2. With vLLM 0.32.0 or later, serve ibm-granite/granite-4.2-3b with --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.py isn't needed
  3. With SGLang 0.5.18 or later, --reasoning-parser auto --tool-call-parser auto resolve to IBM's recommended parsers, and the reasoning comes back in reasoning_content
  4. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 for every mode, as IBM requires
  5. Pass enable_thinking false for direct answers or low_effort true for short reasoning, through chat_template_kwargs on an OpenAI-compatible server
  6. Earlier turns' thinking is stripped by default (truncate_history_thinking), so pass it false to keep reasoning in multi-turn history
  7. For JSON, use the runtime's guided decoding, since IBM documents no JSON mode for 4.2
  8. Verify the files with python -m model_signing verify sigstore and IBM's identity, per IBM's signature guide

MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL

  1. Plan for a provider unless you have a multi-GPU server: Xiaomi's API platform, OpenRouter or Novita
  2. On SGLang or vLLM pass --tool-call-parser mimo --reasoning-parser mimo
  3. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95, as the card recommends
  4. The card's commands pass trust-remote-code. Read the repository's three Python files first, or use Transformers 5.22.2, which has the model built in
  5. Skip the dflash folder unless you need speculative decoding. Its mask_embedding.pt is a pickle
  6. The Use Restrictions section asks for human oversight of high-risk actions

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 3B or MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL?

MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Granite 4.2 3B's 59.8 (C), and leads in 0 of 4 scored categories. Granite 4.2 3B leads on reach, risk and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Granite 4.2 3B or MiMo-V2.6-Flash-RL

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