# Granite 4.2 3B vs Ripple-65B Preview (slim)

> Granite 4.2 3B scores 59.8 (C) to Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-ripple-65b-preview.md (~7,650 tokens) · this version ~1,230 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-ripple-65b-preview.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-ripple-65b-preview
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-04
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Granite 4.2 3B scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Ripple-65B Preview's 53.3 (D), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Granite 4.2 3B: C 59.8, rank #67 of 121 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-4-2-3b.min.md
- Ripple-65B Preview: D 53.3, rank #103 of 121 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ripple-65b-preview.min.md
- Granite 4.2 3B, good 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 45; Agent interface, 85 against 75; Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 49.
- Ripple-65B Preview, good for Teams with Blackwell GPUs or a DGX Spark who want an Apache 2.0 coding model to try for terminal and agentic coding work, and can run the publisher's code to serve it.

| Category | Granite 4.2 3B | Ripple-65B Preview |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 95 | 45 |
| Risk (20%) | 55 | 55 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 75 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 92 | 49 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Granite 4.2 3B | Ripple-65B Preview |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | IBM | Ricursive Intelligence |
| Last release | 2026-10-20 | 2026-11-04 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | not read yet |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Reach, Granite 4.2 3B +50: 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.); Ripple-65B Preview 45 (Memory 10 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Ricursive's NVFP4 at 57.2 GB, 68.7 GB with a fifth added, which is over 64 GB and fits our reference machine. Runtimes 0, no released runtime runs the ricursive architecture with its own code; Ricursive's SGLang plugin and Transformers' remote code don't count. Builds 10, one quantised precision (NVFP4) from Ricursive. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, Ricursive serves no API, Hugging Face maps no provider, Together AI's page says coming soon, and GMI Cloud's and OpenRouter's pages weren't read.)
- Documentation and upkeep, Granite 4.2 3B +43: 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).); Ripple-65B Preview 49 (Model card 14 of 20, no limitations and no knowledge cut-off. Training data 5, a general description with token counts and no cut-off. Last change 20, released today. Responsiveness 0, no discussions yet, read as none answered. Version policy 5, a first release, with the NVFP4 checkpoint replaced in place on release day under a commit note. File health 5, tokenizer_config.json carries a second, tool-less chat template and a 131,072-token limit against the card's 1M.)
- Agent interface, Granite 4.2 3B +10: Granite 4.2 3B 85 (The template ships in the repository (20). The card shows how tools are declared and how calls come back, and names qwen3_coder for vLLM and SGLang (25). The template renders several calls in a turn (20). JSON output isn't documented for 4.2 (0). Thinking turns off or goes to low effort per request, with the reasoning returned apart in SGLang (10), and 131,072 tokens are native (10).); Ripple-65B Preview 75 (Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, Ricursive's server README says how tools are declared and calls come back, with the ripple parser in SGLang 0.5.19. Trained tool calling 20, one or more calls a turn and agentic-coding RL. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the template has no thinking switch or effort levels. Context 10, long-context training at 2M-token sequences for a stated 1M.)