Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Granite 4.2 8B vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

Granite 4.2 8B and NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB leads on risk. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Granite 4.2 8B C

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 90
  • Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 65

Watch for

No safety results published for it

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB C

Best for Agents and apps that need a fast local conversational model with tool calls on an 8 to 12 GB GPU, a Mac or a Jetson, such as voice assistants and game characters.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 80 against 55

Watch for

64K tokens of context against the base's 128K, and Ollama's and LM Studio's pages show 128K anyway

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 +27

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.

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB 65

The model card earns 20, all seven items with limitations in the linked subcard. Training data earns 15, the RL datasets published and a cut-off given, but the card's data section describes a larger SFT corpus the report says wasn't used, and the base's pre-training is described only in general. Last change earns 20 for 23 October 2026. Responsiveness earns 0, as NVIDIA hasn't answered either of the two discussions. Version policy earns 5 as a first release whose GGUF was replaced on release day with only a commit title. File health earns 5, since the card and the template disagree on the thinking default and both cards carry leftover lines.

Risk NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +25

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.

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB 80

File safety earns 25, safetensors and GGUF only, and the documented routes run no repository code (an undocumented Inference Endpoints handler.py sits in the BF16 repository). Provenance earns 15, NVIDIA's linked organisation with a hash for every file. Safety evaluation earns 0, since NVIDIA names its content-safety and bias datasets but publishes no results. Agent guidance earns 15, for instruction-hierarchy training NVIDIA documents and a subcard on prompt injection and the safeguards to add. Licence risk keeps all 15 under OpenMDW-1.1 and Apache 2.0. The security programme earns 10 for the card's reporting route and NVIDIA's public bulletins.

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. 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.

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB 90

Memory earns 30, since NVIDIA's Q4_K_M GGUF is 6.18 GB, 7.4 GB with a fifth added. Runtimes earn the full 25 from released llama.cpp, vLLM, Transformers, SGLang, Ollama and LM Studio. Builds earn 10, as NVIDIA's only quantised build is the Q4_K_M GGUF and the DFlash repositories are drafters. Terms earn 10, because OpenMDW-1.1 is permissive with no threshold or use policy but isn't an OSI licence, and the Gemma 4 base adds plain Apache 2.0. Download earns 10, with no gate. Hosted earns 5, as NVIDIA's own API serves it.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGranite 4.2 8BNVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GBEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259590Granite 4.2 8B +5
Risk20%205580NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB +25
Agent interface10%108585even
Documentation and upkeep10%109265Granite 4.2 8B +27
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactGranite 4.2 8BNVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorIBMNVIDIA
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0OpenMDW-1.1
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-202026-10-23
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone4/5 (4)

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.

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

A small cousin for voice and device assistants, game characters and robot interfaces, trained for multi-turn tool calls, instruction hierarchy and short spoken replies, with thinking switchable per request. NVIDIA's Q4_K_M GGUF needs about 8 GB, and Ollama and LM Studio carry it. Context is 64K, half the Gemma 4 base, and NVIDIA publishes no safety results.

Before you call either

Granite 4.2 8B

  1. Start it with ollama run granite4.2:8b, or llama-server -hf ibm-granite/granite-4.2-8b-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja
  2. 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
  3. Thinking is on by default. Pass enable_thinking false to turn it off or low_effort true for short reasoning
  4. The context is 131,072 tokens. The card's 512K extension isn't documented
  5. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  6. IBM recommends Granite Guardian beside it to flag risky inputs and outputs

NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

  1. Quickest start is ollama run nemotron-3.5-bolt:e4b, about 8 GB of files, and set num_ctx to 65536 or less, since NVIDIA supports 64K
  2. With NVIDIA's GGUF use llama-server -m Nemotron-3.5-Bolt-E4B-Q4_K_M.gguf -c 65536 -ngl 999 --jinja, and add --reasoning on --reasoning-budget <tokens> to cap thinking
  3. With vLLM 0.31.0 or later pass --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser gemma4 --reasoning-parser gemma4 and the repository's chat_template.jinja
  4. Pass enable_thinking explicitly in chat_template_kwargs, since the template defaults to off whatever the card says, and set skip_special_tokens false as the card's examples do
  5. Use temperature=1.0 and top_p=0.95 in both modes, as the card says
  6. Set conversational_mode true for spoken replies, which appends a brevity instruction to the system prompt
  7. Answer a slow tool at once with a pending tool message, then send the result later as a user message starting TOOL RESULT, as the card's asynchronous pattern says
  8. Keep persistent rules in the system prompt and send state updates as separate user or system messages in order, per the card's prompting guidelines

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 8B or NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB?

Granite 4.2 8B and NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB leads on risk.

Other comparisons with Granite 4.2 8B or NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Bolt E4B 4GB

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