Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 8B vs Kronos
Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in every scored category. 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 55
- Risk, 55 against 50
- Agent interface, 85 against 60
- Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 61
Watch for
No safety results published for it
Kronos C
Best for Agents that need a quick local forecast or synthetic sample of a candlestick series on modest hardware, for research or as one input among others.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
Runs only through the publisher's own PyTorch code from GitHub, in no named runtime and with no quantised build
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 +40
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.
Kronos 55
Memory 30, the publisher's Kronos-mini with its tokeniser is 0.03 GB and even Kronos-base is 0.43 GB in FP32. Runtimes 0, it runs only through the publisher's own PyTorch package from GitHub, and none of the six named runtimes supports it. Builds 0, FP32 safetensors only. Terms 15, MIT with nothing added. Download 10, nothing is gated. Hosted 0, no inference provider or publisher API serves it (provider mapping still empty on 4 November).
Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 8B +31
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.
Kronos 61
Model card 11, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't. Training data 20, the paper lists every exchange with asset and observation counts, the filtering and a June 2024 end. Last change 5, the reference code on 13 April 2026 (still the newest commit on 4 November, 205 days) and the Hub repositories on 9 September 2025. Responsiveness 20, the publisher answered 10 of 18 Hugging Face discussions (recounted by script on 4 November), though none since 24 November 2025, and the seven opened since April 2026 have no reply from it. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 0, the cards point to example data the repository has deleted and to licence and requirements links on a branch that doesn't exist.
Agent interface Granite 4.2 8B +25
Granite 4.2 8B 85
Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, with roles, tools, tool responses, the thinking switch and low effort. Tool-calling format 25, the card has tool-calling sections for vLLM and SGLang, declares tools with OpenAI's function schema and names the parser to use, qwen3_coder, which both runtimes ship in the released versions read. Trained tool calling 20, the template loops over every entry in an assistant turn's tool_calls, so it renders several calls in one turn, and the card names tool calling and agentic workflows as what it's best for. Structured output 0, the card doesn't document JSON or JSON Schema output or how to ask for it. Reasoning control 10, the card documents thinking on by default, non-thinking and low-effort modes per request through the template (enable_thinking and low_effort), with the reasoning returned apart from the answer. Context 10, 131,072 tokens natively per the card and config.json. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.
Kronos 60
Read for a forecasting model, the tool-calling, trained tool calling and structured-output lines stand for what it takes and returns. The card documents the DataFrame and timestamps it takes and the DataFrame it returns, and the publisher's KronosPredictor builds and parses them (25). It was trained on six K-line fields with calendar fields, one series per forecast (10). Output is a typed DataFrame indexed by the requested timestamps, the mean of the sampled paths (15). The input format is given only as code (10). Reasoning control and context score 0, with no reasoning and a 512-bar context (2,048 for Kronos-mini).
Risk Granite 4.2 8B +5
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.
Kronos 50
File safety 15, safetensors only, but the only documented loading path is the publisher's Python package in place of a runtime. Provenance 15, the files are in the NeoQuasar account the publisher's README links, with SHA-256 hashes. Safety evaluation 0, none published. Agent guidance 5, the README's general cautions that the fine-tuning pipeline isn't a production trading system. Licence risk 15, plain MIT; the broken licence link is charged to file health. Security programme 0, no reporting route found.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Granite 4.2 8B | Kronos | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 95 | 55 | Granite 4.2 8B +40 |
| Risk | 20%20 | 55 | 50 | Granite 4.2 8B +5 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 60 | Granite 4.2 8B +25 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 92 | 61 | Granite 4.2 8B +31 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61/100 | C 55.2/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 8B | Kronos |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | IBM | Yu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua University |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-20 | 2026-04-13 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Popularity | none | 43k stars |
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.
Kronos
Forecasts the next price bars from a history of up to 512 candlestick bars. Every size fits in under 0.5 GB and runs on a CPU, but only through the publisher's own Python package. Nobody has benchmarked it independently, its quickstart data was deleted from the repository, and the publisher hasn't replied since November 2025.
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
Kronos
- Clone https://github.com/shiyu-coder/Kronos and
pip install -r requirements.txt, then loadKronos.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-small")andKronosTokenizer.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-Tokenizer-base")and wrap them in KronosPredictor - Pair Kronos-mini with Kronos-Tokenizer-2k and Kronos-small or Kronos-base with Kronos-Tokenizer-base, the cards' pairing
- The examples read examples/data/XSHG_5min_600977.csv, which no longer exists; point them at tests/data/regression_input.csv, 2,500 five-minute bars
- Keep the lookback at or under max_context, 512 bars, and pass the future timestamps you want as y_timestamp, since the calendar fields come from them
- Raise sample_count for a steadier forecast, but expect only the mean back; call the lower-level auto_regressive_inference yourself if you need the paths
- Treat forecasts as model output to check, not signals; the README says its own backtest pipeline isn't a production trading system
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 8B or Kronos?
Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Kronos's 55.2 (C), and leads in every scored category.
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- Kronos vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-27B
- Kronos vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- Kronos vs ThinkingCap (Qwen3.8 27B)
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-kronos.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/kronos.json - From a terminal
anchor compare granite-4-2-8b kronos(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "granite-4-2-8b", "b": "kronos"}at/mcp, no key