Noometry

Model comparison

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct vs Qwen3.5-Flash

Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct IBM

32.4

Rank #258 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-Flash Alibaba (Qwen)

42.5

Rank #112 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-Flash in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3.5-Flash leads 57.9 to 35.5.
  • Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Granite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
ProviderIBMAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index32.442.5
Released—2026-02-23
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window—1M
Max output—66K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.10
Output $ / M tokens—$0.40
Results tracked1332

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 34.5 (#233), Qwen3.5-Flash: 34.2 (#242)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Coding11861412
LMArena WebDev—1244
ALE-Bench—221.8

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 24.1 (#120), Qwen3.5-Flash: —

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard27.1%—
Vending-Bench 2—462.69

Reasoning Qwen3.5-Flash leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 22.1 (#207), Qwen3.5-Flash: 33.7 (#72)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Hard Prompts11451403
Chess Puzzles—21%
Mystery Game Puzzles—20%
DTBench—82.9%
LMCA—29.1%
Epoch Capabilities Index—143.98

Math Qwen3.5-Flash leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 33.0 (#209), Qwen3.5-Flash: 37.4 (#158)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Math11521407
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—18.2%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—84.4%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—6.2%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—0%

Knowledge Qwen3.5-Flash leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#220), Qwen3.5-Flash: 43.2 (#93)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Expert11421407
GPQA Diamond—82.3%
SimpleQA Verified—20.3%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—10.5%

Multilingual Qwen3.5-Flash leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 30.9 (#260), Qwen3.5-Flash: 50.5 (#121)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Non-English10991385
LMArena Chinese11451446
LMArena Russian10921379
LMArena French—1412
LMArena German—1390
LMArena Japanese—1368
LMArena Korean—1344
LMArena Spanish—1400

Instruction Following Qwen3.5-Flash leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 58.6 (#259), Qwen3.5-Flash: 72.6 (#139)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Instruction Following11311374

Long Context Qwen3.5-Flash leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.2 (#241), Qwen3.5-Flash: 42.4 (#124)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Longer Query11621392

Writing & Preference Qwen3.5-Flash leads

Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.5 (#266), Qwen3.5-Flash: 57.9 (#122)

BenchmarkGranite 3.1 8b InstructQwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Text11501397
LMArena Creative Writing11291343
LMArena Multi-Turn11081393

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct better than Qwen3.5-Flash?

Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct or Qwen3.5-Flash better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (34.5 vs 34.2); test both on your own repository before choosing.

How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and Qwen3.5-Flash share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-Flash has 32.

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