Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 8B vs Inkling
Inkling scores 64.7 (B) on agent readiness against Granite 4.2 8B's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Granite 4.2 8B leads on reach 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 4969 open weights comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Agents that want a documented, signed, Apache 2.0 reasoning model with tool calling on a 16 GB machine
Ahead on
- Reach, 95 against 50
- Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 87
Watch for
No safety results published for it
Inkling B
Best for Agents calling a hosted open multimodal model with audio input, or teams with a multi-GPU datacentre node who want to run it themselves.
Ahead on
- Risk, 70 against 55
Watch for
The smallest build Thinking Machines publishes needs about 710 GB, beyond any single workstation
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 8B +45
Granite 4.2 8B 95
Memory 30, IBM's own 4-bit MLX build granite-4.2-8b-q4-mlx is 4.95 GB, and 4.95 GB × 1.2 = 5.9 GB, within 8 GB. Its Q4_0 GGUF is 5.06 GB and Ollama's library build granite4.2:8b (5.3 GB) fits 8 GB too. Runtimes 25, Released versions run the granite architecture in llama.cpp (granite, b12242), vLLM (GraniteForCausalLM in the v0.33.0 registry), SGLang (granite.py at v0.5.23), Transformers (v5.22.2) and Ollama (its own granite4.2 library entry, 8b tag). Builds 15, IBM publishes FP8, MXFP4 and NVFP4 safetensors builds, a GGUF repository with Q4_0 to Q8_0 and BF16 files, and 4-bit, 8-bit and BF16 MLX builds, so quantised builds at two precisions or more. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, an OSI-approved licence, with no use policy or other terms added on the card. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the BF16, FP8, MXFP4, NVFP4, GGUF and MLX repositories, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps one inference provider (DeepInfra, live), short of the two the line needs. 30 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 95.
Inkling 50
Memory 0 of 30, the smallest 4-bit build is Thinking Machines' NVFP4 at 592.0 GB, about 710 GB with a fifth added, far above 256 GB. Runtimes 15, released Transformers, vLLM and SGLang run it, llama.cpp, Ollama and LM Studio don't. Builds 10, one quantised build (NVFP4). Terms 10, Apache 2.0 with a binding acceptable use policy on top, read as a custom licence. Download 10, no gate. Hosted 5, Together AI, Fireworks and DeepInfra are live on Hugging Face, and Thinking Machines' Tinker serves it too.
Risk Inkling +15
Granite 4.2 8B 55
File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25). Provenance 15, the files sit in the ibm-granite organisation, which IBM's Granite docs and the GitHub README link to (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 5, General cautions. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, field-of-use limit, threshold or change clause, and the card's licence link resolves. Security programme 5, www.ibm.com/.well-known/security.txt names IBM PSIRT, read for the 3B listing on 4 November 2026 (5). 15 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 55.
Inkling 70
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 and FORTRESS results and commissioned external testers who published nothing. Agent guidance 10, the card says what its refusals miss and which safeguards to add, 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.
Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 8B +5
Granite 4.2 8B 92
Model card 17, Intended use (best for), limitations (ethical considerations and limitations), architecture, parameters (8B), context length (128K native) and 12 tested languages are on the card. Training data 20, IBM's disclosure file for the 8B lists the datasets used in pre-training and post-training as machine-readable metadata, and the card describes the three training stages. Last change 20, the last commit, on 20 October 2026, replaced model.safetensors.index.json (titled "granite-4.2 index file fix"), 21 days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 5 discussions that aren't pull requests (13 September to 5 November 2026), 4 have a reply from an ibm-granite member. Version policy 5, Granite 4.1 8B stays in its own repository and 4.2 came out in new ones. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture, the 131,072-token context and the thinking switch. 17 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 92.
Inkling 87
Model card 17 of 20, everything but a dated knowledge cut-off, counting Thinking Machines' own model card page. Training data 15, an EU training-content summary with sources, mix, a July 2026 collection cut-off and filtering. Last change 20, the weights files last changed on 23 July 2026, and Thinking Machines' Inkling renderer in tinker-cookbook changed on 30 October 2026, 3 days ago. Responsiveness 20, Thinking Machines answered 8 of the 12 questions and reports in its discussions. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 10, the files agree and the reports were answered.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Granite 4.2 8B | Inkling | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 95 | 50 | Granite 4.2 8B +45 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 70 | Inkling +15 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 85 | even |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 92 | 87 | Granite 4.2 8B +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61/100 | B 64.7/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 8B | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | 2026-07-23 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Granite 4.2 8B
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Granite 4.2 8B
IBM's mid-size reasoning cousin, with the same strengths as the 3B. It runs in every runtime we count from IBM's own builds on a 16 GB machine, is signed, plain Apache 2.0, and comes with a disclosure of its training data. No safety results are published and structured output isn't documented.
Inkling
Thinking Machines' large multimodal generalist, stronger than Inkling-Small on factual recall by its own numbers. It needs about 710 GB of datacentre GPU memory even in NVFP4, so most agents will use a host such as Together AI or Tinker. The main risks are a use policy that binds on download and can change, and no outside safety results.
Before you call either
Granite 4.2 8B
- Start it with
ollama run granite4.2:8b, orllama-server -hf ibm-granite/granite-4.2-8b-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja - With vLLM 0.32.0 or later leave out
--reasoning-parser-plugin, since the parser is built in, and use--tool-call-parser qwen3_coder - Thinking is on by default. Pass
enable_thinkingfalse to turn it off orlow_efforttrue for short reasoning - The context is 131,072 tokens. The card's 512K extension isn't documented
- Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
- IBM recommends Granite Guardian beside it to flag risky inputs and outputs
Inkling
- Unless you have a multi-GPU Blackwell or H200 node, call it through Together AI, Fireworks, DeepInfra or Tinker rather than starting it
- On 8 B200 GPUs, SGLang's recipe is
sglang serve --trust-remote-code --model-path thinkingmachines/Inkling-NVFP4 --tp 8 --quantization modelopt_fp4 --enable-multimodal --reasoning-parser inkling --tool-call-parser inkling - Use the inkling tool parser, not Hermes, and the inkling reasoning parser
- Pass
reasoning_effortas none, minimal, low, medium, high (the default) or max, or a number from 0 to 0.99. The repository's template has no xhigh preset and raises an error for it, though Thinking Machines' docs list xhigh - Tool call arguments must reach the template as an object, not a JSON string, or it raises an error
- Audio should be 16 kHz WAV, ideally under 20 minutes, and images 40 to 4096 px a side, per the card
- 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 8B or Inkling?
Inkling scores 64.7 (B) on agent readiness against Granite 4.2 8B's 61 (C), and leads in 1 of 4 scored categories. Granite 4.2 8B leads on reach and documentation and upkeep.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-inkling.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/granite-4-2-8b.json·/api/v1/tools/inkling.json - From a terminal
anchor compare granite-4-2-8b inkling(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "granite-4-2-8b", "b": "inkling"}at/mcp, no key