Side-by-side comparison of IBM Granite 4.1 8B (IBM · USA) and Mistral Small (Mistral AI · France) for self-hosted deployment of the open-weight model. IBM Granite 4.1 8B is rated EU-ready; Mistral Small is EU-ready. They part ways on commercial use: IBM Granite 4.1 8B is "Unrestricted", Mistral Small is "Yes".
| Field | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | ||
| Verdict | EU-ready Per the published model card, Granite 4.1 8B is an Apache 2.0 9B-parameter dense decoder with a 131k-token context, sourced from publicly-available datasets, internal synthetic data and human-curated material. IBM continues the unusual-for-the-industry training-data transparency that anchored the Granite 3 family, and offers IP indemnification when the model is consumed via watsonx — a strong default for regulated enterprise pilots that need a defensible weights-available alternative to hyperscaler frontier models. | EU-ready Best-in-class permissive licence from an EU vendor. Apache 2.0 means no usage caps, no royalty, no revocation risk. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-05-03 | 2026-04-15 |
| Open-weight | ||
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Commercial use | Unrestricted | Yes |
| Training data | Disclosed | Partial |
| Origin | USA | EU |
| Performance & pricing? | ||
| Quality index | — | 13/100 |
| Speed | — | 152 tok/s |
| Blended price | — | $0.15/M |
| Context window | — | — |
| Evidence | ||
| Sources | ||