Granite 4.1 8B
IBM · released Apr 6, 2026 · ibm-granite/granite-4.1-8b
- Type
- Open weightsApache License 2.0
- Params
- 8.8B
- Context
- 131K
about 98K words of context
Our take
Written Sep 30, 2026Granite 4.1 8B is a downloadable text model from IBM that you can run yourself or reach through a host, and its licence allows commercial use, changes and redistribution. Its measured quality sits near the bottom of the Arena boards, so pick it for cheap bulk text work rather than for anything judged on the answer itself.
Use it for high-volume text work where the bill matters more than answer quality — classification, extraction, routing, bulk rewriting — or when you want to run a model on a single machine. Its request capacity leaves room for a long report or a stack of documents beside the question, though reliable recall across all of it is unverified in our data. Skip it if the work is judged on the answer itself: coding, creative writing, maths or instruction following, where it places near the bottom of its fields.
The case for it
- Both listed hosts sit at the same low rate, so bulk text processing stays inexpensive whichever you pick.
- A request capacity of 131072 tokens leaves room for a long report or a stack of documents beside the question, though reliable recall across all of it is unverified in our data.
- Apache License 2.0 allows commercial use, changes and redistribution.
The case against it
- Human preference for its answers is near the bottom of the field: 145th of 168 on Arena Text (overall) as of 25 Sep 2026, a board that records which answer people preferred rather than whether it was correct.
- On building web applications it places 94th of 95 on Arena Code (WebDev) as of 25 Sep 2026, a board scored from human votes on web-app building tasks.
- Coding, writing and maths all place in the lower part of their boards: 143rd of 168 on Arena Coding, 147th of 168 on Arena Creative Writing and 129th of 163 on Arena Maths, all as of 25 Sep 2026.
How good is it?
An open text model from IBM for general chat, though it trails most models on everyday questions, writing and code.
- getting answers to everyday questionsArena Text (overall) · 145th of 168
- drafts, rewrites and editingArena Creative Writing · 147th of 168
- writing and completing codeArena Coding · 143rd of 168
EverydayGeneral questions and everyday reasoning
Arena Text (overall)145th of 168 · 1304
CodingWriting and fixing code on its own
Arena Coding143rd of 168 · 1353
AgenticPlanning, calling tools, staying on task
Not yet scored on Arena Agent.
WritingDrafting and rewriting prose
Arena Creative Writing147th of 168 · 1260
Arena Creative Writing is the only board that has scored it for this.
These tests check whether a model follows instructions — a precondition for all the work above, but not a measure of how well that work is done.
Every published score for this model7 scoresEvery figure we hold, from 7 boards, with who ran it and a link to the source — including the boards no rating above is built on.
Can you run it yourself?
Comfortable fit
GeForce RTX 4090 · 24 GB
Room to spare. 15.5 GB spare means a 10% error in the size would not change the answer.
GeForce RTX 5090 · 32 GB
Room to spare. 23.5 GB spare means a 10% error in the size would not change the answer.
Apple M1 (8-core GPU) · 16 GB
Room to spare. 4.7 GB spare means a 10% error in the size would not change the answer.
Memory use by level
Against a 24 GB card.
What is quantisation? →This model on every device we track71 devicesThe Q4 build most people download, on each device: what the weights come to, how much context the memory leaves, and whether it runs. Smallest device that runs it first.
Check against your own machine → · Where to rent it hosted →
Or rent it from someone else
Prices checked 27 days ago — each listing carries its own date.
- per 1M tokens
- $0.050 in / $0.10 out
- Context served
- 131K
- Throughput
- Not measured
| Provider | In / out per 1M tokens | Context | Throughput | Trains on prompts | Logs prompts | Zero retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouterOpenRouter's own listing | $0.050 / $0.10checked 27 days ago | 131K | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| CoreWeavebf16Through OpenRouter | $0.050 / $0.10checked 27 days ago | 131K | not measured | No | No | Unknown |
Across the 2 listings we hold: 1 says it does not train on prompts, 0 say they do and 1 does not say. 0 appear in the zero-retention registry we check; the rest are unknown to us.
What each host's API supports
From the parameter list each endpoint publishes. Streaming is omitted: nothing we hold reports it, for any model.
| Provider | Tool calling | JSON output | Strict schema |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouterOpenRouter's own listing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CoreWeavebf16Through OpenRouter | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Tool calling: 2 of 2 listings say yes. JSON output: 2 of 2 listings say yes. Strict schema: 2 of 2 listings say yes.
Models people weigh against Granite 4.1 8B
When we formed this view
Recent changes
What moved
first indexed by our pipelineEach date is the day we first saw the change, or the day the maker announced it.
What we do not know about this model yet
- We hold no measured file for it, so all 3 sizes on this page are calculated from the parameter count.
- Nothing we hold says whether an endpoint streams, so we do not show it either way.
- 1 of 2 listings does not say whether it trains on prompts.
- We hold no batch or off-peak rate for any of its listings.
- We hold a decode speed for it, but no prompt-processing (prefill) figure, so how long the input side of a job takes is unknown to us.
Licence and identifiers
What the licence allowsApache License 2.0, what it allows commercially, and the identifiers you need to pull this model — its Hugging Face repo, our slug and a machine-readable card.
Licence
Apache License 2.0
Fully permissive: commercial use, redistribution, and derivatives allowed. Requires attribution and a copy of the license. Includes an express patent grant.
Identifiers
- Hugging Face
- ibm-granite/granite-4.1-8b
- Architecture
- Dense
- Takes in, gives back
- Text in, text out
- Catalogue slug
- ibm-granite-granite-4-1-8b