Model comparison
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct vs Qwen3-30B-A3B
Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.5 to 32.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 2b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 55.9 to 34.3.
Side by side
| Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 32.6 | 38.5 |
| Released | — | 2025-04-28 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | — | 41K |
| Max output | — | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.12 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.50 |
| Results tracked | 12 | 32 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 32.9 (#255), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.0 (#188)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1149 | 1416 |
| SciCode | — | 33.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 29.8% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.5 (#75)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 41.4% |
Reasoning Too close to call
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 21.0 (#206), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 21.6 (#193)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1138 | 1398 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 8% |
| DTBench | — | 69.3% |
| LMCA | — | 22.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.63 |
Math Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 30.6 (#206), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 36.0 (#133)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1159 | 1394 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 47.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 70.3% |
Knowledge Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 30.3 (#223), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.7 (#96)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1131 | 1395 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 70.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 12.3% |
Multilingual Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 29.2 (#264), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.8 (#126)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1068 | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1138 | 1434 |
| LMArena Russian | 1063 | 1369 |
| LMArena French | — | 1419 |
| LMArena German | — | 1379 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1338 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1333 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1403 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 58.0 (#259), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.2 (#137)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1116 | 1364 |
Long Context Granite 3.1 2b Instruct leads
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 35.0 (#239), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#278)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1155 | 1379 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 40.6% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 34.3 (#269), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.9 (#138)
| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1127 | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1116 | 1318 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1099 | 1378 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75.3% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 3.1 2b Instruct better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.5 to 32.6 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 3.1 2b Instruct or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?
Qwen3-30B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.0 versus 32.9 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 2b Instruct and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?
12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 2b Instruct has 12 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.