Compare / Granite 4.2 30B vs Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking
Granite 4.2 30B vs Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Granite 4.2 30B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 67.0 vs 50.7. On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, Granite 4.2 30B wins 5 and Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking wins 0. Both need about 21.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Granite 4.2 30B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you mostly write code
- you need math and reasoning
- you need precise instruction following
- you work with long documents
- you need a permissive license (Apache-2.0)
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Pick Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking if…
No clear advantage in the data we have.
Specifications
| Granite 4.2 30B | Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 67.0 (likely 66–69) | 50.7 (likely 46–55) |
| Lab | IBM (Granite) · United States | Kakao (Kanana) · Rest of Asia |
| Released | 2026-08-07 | 2026-01-14 |
| Parameters | 30B (dense) | 30.7B (3B active, MoE) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~21.4 GB | ~20.2 GB |
| Context window | 131K tokens | 32K tokens |
| Input | text | text |
| Reasoning | No thinking | Always thinks |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Kanana License |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 32K | 1.3K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30B | Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro Knowledge | 77.6 | 74.2 |
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 66.4 | 57.8 |
| AIME Math | 89.2 | 74.0 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | 75.8 | 58.8 |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 29.2 | — |
| IFBench Instruction following | 77.2 | 47.8 |
| IFEval Instruction following | — | 82.2 |
| BFCL Agentic | 61.4 | — |
| HMMT Math | 89.2 | — |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Granite 4.2 30B or Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking?
Granite 4.2 30B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 67.0 vs 50.7. On the 5 benchmarks both labs report, Granite 4.2 30B wins 5 and Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 21.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Granite 4.2 30B has the longer context window: 131K tokens against 32K.
Can I use Granite 4.2 30B and Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking commercially?
Granite 4.2 30B is released under Apache-2.0 and Kanana-2 30B-A3B Thinking under Kanana License. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.