Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 8B vs Ling-3.0-tiny
Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ling-3.0-tiny's 56.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. 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
- Risk, 55 against 50
- Agent interface, 85 against 60
- Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 56
Watch for
No safety results published for it
Best for Agents on a laptop or small GPU that want a fast local model for tool calls and short reasoning, under MIT
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No inference provider is listed on the Hub and no inclusionAI API serves it
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 8B +36
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.
Ling-3.0-tiny 56
Model card 11, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, limitations, languages and a cut-off aren't. Training data 15, a data card with sources, size, cut-off and filtering. Last change 15, the newest commit is still the card change of 24 September 2026, 41 days before 4 November. Responsiveness 10, six of 16 discussions answered by an inclusionAI member, some. Version policy 5, a first release at this size. File health 0, the card's MTP recipe contradicts the files and a broken index size waits without a reply.
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.
Ling-3.0-tiny 60
Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10, the format is only in the template and the card names the ling3 parser in commands without describing it, while SGLang uses another parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic results on the card. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, thinking turns off per request but the card doesn't say where the reasoning comes back. Context 10, 131,072 tokens native.
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.
Ling-3.0-tiny 50
File safety gets 15, safetensors and GGUF only, but the card's vLLM command runs the repository's config code with --trust-remote-code. Provenance gets 15 for files in inclusionAI's own organisation with a checksum on each. Safety evaluation is 0, since SingProbe's results grade the probe, not the model. Agent guidance gets 5 for the SingProbe guardrail inclusionAI publishes for this model, with no statement of trained refusals. MIT carries no licence deductions (15). No security contact or disclosure policy was found (0).
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Granite 4.2 8B | Ling-3.0-tiny | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | 35%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Reach | 25%25 | 95 | 95 | even |
| 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 | 56 | Granite 4.2 8B +36 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61/100 | C 56.2/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 8B | Ling-3.0-tiny |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | IBM | inclusionAI (Ant Group) |
| 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 | 2026-08-31 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (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.
Ling-3.0-tiny
A small, quick hybrid reasoning model for local agent work, tool calls and coding, under MIT. It runs in about 6 GB from inclusionAI's 4-bit GGUF in released Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Ollama, with no host. The risks are a card that doesn't match the files in places, a vLLM route running repository code, and no 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
Ling-3.0-tiny
- Start it with
llama-server -hf inclusionAI/Ling-3.0-tiny-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja -c 32768, which needs llama.cpp b11772 or a recent release with bailingmoe3 - With vLLM 0.32.0,
vllm serve inclusionAI/Ling-3.0-tiny --trust-remote-code --enable-prefix-caching --mamba-cache-mode align --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser ling3 --reasoning-parser ling3, which runs the repository's config code - With SGLang 0.5.22, its cookbook uses
--reasoning-parser deepseek-r1 --tool-call-parser glm45for this model, and drop the card's NEXTN flags since tiny has no MTP layer - Thinking is on by default, pass
chat_template_kwargswithenable_thinkingfalse for short tasks - Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 20
- The template keeps earlier reasoning in the prompt, which grows long agent sessions
- Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented
- For a guardrail, inclusionAI's Ling-3.0-tiny-singprobe scores intent, unsafe output and hallucination per token, but only through SGLang and vLLM integration branches
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 8B or Ling-3.0-tiny?
Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Ling-3.0-tiny's 56.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories.
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-ling-3-0-tiny.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/ling-3-0-tiny.json - From a terminal
anchor compare granite-4-2-8b ling-3-0-tiny(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "granite-4-2-8b", "b": "ling-3-0-tiny"}at/mcp, no key