Model comparison

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct vs Qwen3 32B

Qwen3 32B is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.2 to 31.6 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct IBM

31.6

Rank #270 Confirmed

Qwen3 32B Alibaba (Qwen)

39.2

Rank #172 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3 32B in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3 32B leads 52.9 to 31.1.

Side by side

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and Qwen3 32B specifications
Granite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
ProviderIBMAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index31.639.2
Released—2025-04
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window—131K
Max output—16K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.70
Output $ / M tokens—$2.80
Results tracked1426

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3 32B leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.7 (#301), Qwen3 32B: 37.7 (#190)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
LMArena Coding11121358
Aider Polyglot—40%
SciCode—35.4%
BigCodeBench Instruct29.3%—
BigCodeBench Complete35.4%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: —, Qwen3 32B: 32.6 (#62)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—48.7%

Reasoning Too close to call

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 20.9 (#230), Qwen3 32B: 20.2 (#241)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
LMArena Hard Prompts10921334
Kagi LLM Benchmark—54.9%
CritPt—0.3%
Chess Puzzles—5%
DTBench—67.5%
LMCA—17.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index—138.51

Math Qwen3 32B leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 32.8 (#210), Qwen3 32B: 39.7 (#99)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
LMArena Math11431399
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—66.9%

Knowledge Qwen3 32B leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.6 (#236), Qwen3 32B: 40.0 (#125)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
LMArena Expert10871362
GPQA Diamond—65.7%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—5.9%

Multilingual Qwen3 32B leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 27.2 (#276), Qwen3 32B: 45.6 (#167)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
LMArena Non-English10371317
LMArena Chinese10631357
LMArena Russian10601311
LMArena German—1341

Instruction Following Qwen3 32B leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 56.0 (#276), Qwen3 32B: 68.9 (#179)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
LMArena Instruction Following10881305

Long Context Qwen3 32B leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 34.0 (#252), Qwen3 32B: 43.8 (#87)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
LMArena Longer Query11221327
Fiction.LiveBench—74.2%

Writing & Preference Qwen3 32B leads

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#285), Qwen3 32B: 52.9 (#163)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 3.0 8b InstructQwen3 32B
LMArena Text10961340
LMArena Creative Writing10711297
LMArena Multi-Turn10631331

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct better than Qwen3 32B?

Qwen3 32B is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.2 to 31.6 on the Noometry Index.

Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct or Qwen3 32B better for coding?

Qwen3 32B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.7 versus 29.7 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and Qwen3 32B share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has 14 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 32B has 26.

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