Side-by-side comparison of IBM Granite 4.1 30B (IBM · USA) and SmolLM3 3B (Hugging Face · USA) for self-hosted deployment of the open-weight model. IBM Granite 4.1 30B is rated EU-ready; SmolLM3 3B is EU-ready. They part ways on commercial use: IBM Granite 4.1 30B is "Unrestricted", SmolLM3 3B is "Yes".
| Field | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | ||
| Verdict | EU-ready Per the published model card, Granite 4.1 30B is an Apache 2.0 30-billion-parameter dense decoder with a 131k-token context, trained on the same publicly-available + synthetic + human-curated mix that anchors the rest of the Granite family. The larger sibling of Granite 4.1 8B, positioned for enterprise workloads where the 8B class falls short on reasoning depth — same defensible-default profile, with IP indemnification available via watsonx. | EU-ready Fully open small model: Apache 2.0 weights, training data published, engineering blueprint public. 6 native languages (EN/FR/ES/DE/IT/PT) covers major EU markets. 128K context via YARN. Strong default for edge or on-prem EU deployments where transparency matters. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-05-03 | 2026-04-16 |
| Open-weight | ||
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Commercial use | Unrestricted | Yes |
| Training data | Disclosed | Disclosed |
| Origin | USA | USA |
| Performance & pricing? | ||
| Quality index | — | — |
| Speed | — | — |
| Blended price | — | — |
| Context window | — | — |
| Evidence | ||
| Sources | ||
No overlapping sources between the two entries.