Model comparison
Granite 4.0 Micro vs Qwen Plus
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.0 Micro scores higher in 1 category and Qwen Plus in 4 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen Plus leads 27.4 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 28.3% for Granite 4.0 Micro and 48.1% for Qwen Plus.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Granite 4.0 Micro has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 29.0 | 37.1 |
| Released | 2025-10-02 | 2024-01-25 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | 1M |
| Max output | 118K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.017 | $0.40 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.11 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 8 | 20 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | — | 1328 |
Reasoning Qwen Plus leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 19.2 (#265), Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 63.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1317 |
| DTBench | — | 81.1% |
| LMCA | — | 24% |
Math Qwen Plus leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 12.0 (#307), Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.8% | 17.8% |
| Omni-MATH | 20.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1326 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 65.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |
Knowledge Qwen Plus leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#304), Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 28.3% | 48.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | 39.5% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.7% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1328 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1323 |
Instruction Following Granite 4.0 Micro leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 69.9 (#169), Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 84.9% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1303 |
Long Context Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1324 |
Writing & Preference Qwen Plus leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#216), Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1293 |
| WildBench | 67% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1336 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.0 Micro better than Qwen Plus?
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Granite 4.0 Micro or Qwen Plus?
Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 Micro and Qwen Plus share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 Micro has 8 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.