# Granite 4.2 8B vs MiniCPM-o 4.5 (slim)

> Granite 4.2 8B and MiniCPM-o 4.5 score within a point of each other for open-weight models you run yourself, 61 and 61 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- 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 and MiniCPM-o 4.5 score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). 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
- MiniCPM-o 4.5: C 61, rank #48 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/minicpm-o-4-5.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 90; Risk, 55 against 40; Agent interface, 85 against 35; Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 66.
- MiniCPM-o 4.5, good for Agents that need a local model to see, hear and speak on a laptop or a single small GPU, with a plain licence.

| Category | Granite 4.2 8B | MiniCPM-o 4.5 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 95 | 90 |
| Risk (20%) | 55 | 40 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 35 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 92 | 66 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Granite 4.2 8B | MiniCPM-o 4.5 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | IBM | OpenBMB |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0; built from Qwen3-8B, SigLIP2, Whisper-medium and CosyVoice2, all Apache 2.0 on their Hub cards |
| Last release | 2026-10-20 | 2026-10-24 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Agent interface, Granite 4.2 8B +50: 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.); MiniCPM-o 4.5 35 (Chat template 20, a Jinja template in the tokenizer config.)
- Documentation and upkeep, Granite 4.2 8B +26: 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…); MiniCPM-o 4.5 66 (Model card 11 of 20, limitations, context length and a knowledge cut-off are missing.)
- Risk, Granite 4.2 8B +15: Granite 4.2 8B 55 (File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25).); MiniCPM-o 4.5 40 (File safety 5 of 25, two pickle files sit in the speech stage and the documented load runs repository code.)
- Reach, Granite 4.2 8B +5: 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.); MiniCPM-o 4.5 90 (Memory 30, OpenBMB's 4-bit GGUF with its vision file is 5.9 GB, about 7 GB with a fifth added.)