Noometry

Model comparison

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct IBM

32.4

Rank #258 Confirmed

Qwen3-30B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

38.9

Rank #179 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 55.6 to 35.5.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 27.1% for Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and 41.4% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.

Side by side

Granite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
ProviderIBMAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index32.438.9
Released—2025-04-28
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window—41K
Max output—16K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.12
Output $ / M tokens—$0.50
Results tracked1332

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 34.5 (#233), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Coding11861416
SciCode—33.3%
WeirdML—29.8%

Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 24.1 (#120), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard27.1%41.4%

Reasoning Too close to call

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 22.1 (#207), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Hard Prompts11451398
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 8b Instruct: 33.0 (#209), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Math11521394
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—47.8%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—70.3%

Knowledge Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#220), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Expert11421396
GPQA Diamond—70.1%
Confabulations—12.3%

Multilingual Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 30.9 (#260), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Non-English10991372
LMArena Chinese11451433
LMArena Russian10921370
LMArena French—1418
LMArena German—1380
LMArena Japanese—1337
LMArena Korean—1331
LMArena Spanish—1404

Instruction Following Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 58.6 (#259), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following11311363

Long Context Granite 3.1 8b Instruct leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.2 (#241), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query11621379
Fiction.LiveBench—40.6%

Writing & Preference Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.5 (#266), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Text11501384
LMArena Creative Writing11291317
LMArena Multi-Turn11081378
Short-Story Creative Writing—75.3%

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?

Qwen3-30B-A3B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.5 versus 34.5 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.

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