# Granite 4.2 8B vs Kronos (slim)

> Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) to Kronos's 55.2 (C) for open-weight models you run yourself. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-kronos.md (~9,200 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-kronos.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-kronos
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-10
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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.

- Granite 4.2 8B: C 61, rank #66 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-4-2-8b.min.md
- Kronos: C 55.2, rank #122 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/kronos.min.md
- Granite 4.2 8B, good 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.
- Kronos, good 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.

| Category | Granite 4.2 8B | Kronos |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 95 | 55 |
| Risk (20%) | 55 | 50 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 60 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 92 | 61 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Granite 4.2 8B | Kronos |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | IBM | Yu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua University |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Last release | 2026-10-20 | 2026-04-13 |
| Popularity | none | 43k stars |

Why the edge:
- 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.); 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 o…)
- 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…); Kronos 61 (Model card 11, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't.)
- 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.); Kronos 60 (Read for a forecasting model, the tool-calling, trained tool calling and structured-output lines stand for what it takes and returns.)
- Risk, Granite 4.2 8B +5: Granite 4.2 8B 55 (File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25).); Kronos 50 (File safety 15, safetensors only, but the only documented loading path is the publisher's Python package in place of a runtime.)