Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run
Granite 4.2 8B vs Mistral Large 4
Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Mistral Large 4's 54.6 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Mistral Large 4 leads on risk and agent interface. 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 64
Watch for
No safety results published for it
Best for Operators with an 8-GPU Blackwell or H200 node who want a frontier-sized open model for coding agents and defensive security, with a hosted twin on Mistral's API.
Ahead on
- Risk, 75 against 55
- Agent interface, 95 against 85
Watch for
The smallest 4-bit build needs about 732 GB, so nothing fits a single workstation or a 128 GB machine
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.
Mistral Large 4 50
Memory scores 0, since the smallest 4-bit build, Mistral's NVFP4, is 610 GB, about 732 GB with a fifth added, far above 256 GB. Runtimes score 10, released Transformers and llama.cpp have the architecture, while vLLM v0.33.0 and SGLang v0.5.23 still lack it, the llama.cpp build Ollama 0.40.14 pins predates it, and LM Studio has no entry. Builds score 15 for Mistral's FP8 and NVFP4 releases. Terms score 10, a modified MIT licence that is free commercially except for Model-as-a-Service businesses. Download scores 10 with no gate, and hosted too scores 5 because Mistral's API serves these weights. 0 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 50.
Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 8B +28
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.
Mistral Large 4 64
The card covers intended use, architecture, parameters, context and languages, and misses limitations and a cut-off (14). Training data is described by its mix in the technical report, with no sources, cut-off or filtering (5). The files changed on 2 November 2026, when the report was added (20). A Mistral member replied in three of nine discussions (10). It's a first release with older Large models in their own repositories and no dated note (5), and the files agree with each other and the card (10). 14 + 5 + 20 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 64.
Risk Mistral Large 4 +20
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.
Mistral Large 4 75
File safety scores 25, safetensors only and loaded by Transformers' own code with a Jinja template. Provenance scores 15, Mistral's verified organisation with a hash on every file. Safety evaluation scores 10, refusal and prompt-injection results Mistral ran itself, listed in its 2 November technical report as internal, and red-teaming by outside firms with nothing published. Agent guidance scores 10 for a statement of what the refusals cover and a claim of trained injection resistance, with only general safeguards. Licence risk scores 10, 5 off for the Model-as-a-Service limit. The security programme scores 5 for security.txt with no public advisories. 25 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5 = 75.
Agent interface Mistral Large 4 +10
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.
Mistral Large 4 95
The chat template is in the repository (20). The card documents how tools are declared and come back and names the parser (25), and the template renders several calls in one turn (20). Strict JSON Schema output is documented with how to ask for it (15). Reasoning effort is budgeted per request with the reasoning returned apart from the answer (10). Context scores 5, because the 1M window comes from YaRN scaling and the technical report gives 40K as the longest pretraining sequence. 20 + 25 + 20 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 95.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Large 4 | 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 | 75 | Mistral Large 4 +20 |
| Agent interface | 10%10 | 85 | 95 | Mistral Large 4 +10 |
| Documentation and upkeep | 10%10 | 92 | 64 | Granite 4.2 8B +28 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61/100 | C 54.6/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Granite 4.2 8B | Mistral Large 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Open-weight model | Open-weight model |
| Vendor | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Mistral Ecosystem Open-Weight License (modified MIT) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-20 | 2026-10-29 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
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.
Mistral Large 4
A 1T-parameter mixture-of-experts model from Mistral for coding agents and defensive security, with strict JSON Schema output, parallel tool calls and three reasoning efforts. It needs a multi-GPU server, about 732 GB for the smallest 4-bit build, and no released vLLM or SGLang loads it. The licence bars Model-as-a-Service businesses without a separate deal.
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
Mistral Large 4
- Serve the NVFP4 build on Blackwell with
vllm/vllm-openai:mistral-large-4 --model mistralai/Mistral-Large-4-1T-A52B-NVFP4 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --kv-cache-dtype fp8_ds_mla --tool-call-parser mistral --reasoning-parser mistral --enable-auto-tool-choice; released vLLM doesn't load it - On H200 use the FP8 build with tensor parallelism of 16 or 8 by 2 pipelines, per vLLM's recipe
- Pass
reasoning_effortlow, medium or high (default high); any other value makes the template raise an error, and there is no off switch - Read the reasoning from
message.reasoning;max_completion_tokenscounts reasoning tokens too - Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 at every effort, per the card
- Ask for JSON with
response_formattype json_schema and strict true; the template passes the schema to the model - The template rejects a tool message straight after a user message and a conversation that doesn't start with a user or system message
- Add
--speculative-config '{"method": "dspark", "num_speculative_tokens": 3}'to use the embedded draft head - If you'll offer it to others as a hosted model, read the licence first; Model-as-a-Service use needs Mistral's commercial licence
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 8B or Mistral Large 4?
Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Mistral Large 4's 54.6 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Mistral Large 4 leads on risk and agent interface.
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- Mistral Large 4 vs Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct
- Mistral Large 4 vs Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct
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- Mistral Large 4 vs Swift 1.5 Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-mistral-large-4.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/mistral-large-4.json - From a terminal
anchor compare granite-4-2-8b mistral-large-4(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "granite-4-2-8b", "b": "mistral-large-4"}at/mcp, no key