Model comparison
Granite 4.0 Micro vs Qwen3.5 27B
Qwen3.5 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.4 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 20× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5 27B leads 37.4 to 9.9.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.40 for Qwen3.5 27B.
- Qwen3.5 27B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.
Side by side
| Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 28.8 | 41.4 |
| Released | 2025-10-02 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 262K |
| Max output | 118K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.017 | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.11 | $2.40 |
| Results tracked | 8 | 28 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen3.5 27B: 38.6 (#159)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1357 |
| WeirdML | — | 39.5% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1427 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 349.45 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen3.5 27B: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 201.98 |
Reasoning Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 18.5 (#261), Qwen3.5 27B: 26.6 (#116)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 47.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 45.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1414 |
| DTBench | — | 82.4% |
| LMCA | — | 34% |
Math Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 11.2 (#301), Qwen3.5 27B: 36.8 (#103)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 56.7% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.8% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 20.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1428 |
Knowledge Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#299), Qwen3.5 27B: 37.4 (#149)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 28.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 39.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.7% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1428 |
Multimodal Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen3.5 27B: 38.7 (#56)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1240 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen3.5 27B: 51.0 (#112)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1390 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1478 |
| LMArena French | — | 1409 |
| LMArena German | — | 1393 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1345 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1359 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1389 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1408 |
Instruction Following Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 70.0 (#164), Qwen3.5 27B: 73.7 (#114)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 84.9% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1393 |
Long Context Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen3.5 27B: 43.1 (#103)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1413 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#212), Qwen3.5 27B: 59.5 (#106)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1409 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1362 |
| WildBench | 67% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1410 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.0 Micro better than Qwen3.5 27B?
Qwen3.5 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.4 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 20× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Granite 4.0 Micro or Qwen3.5 27B?
Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 27B lists at $0.30 and $2.40.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5 27B does, with 262K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 Micro and Qwen3.5 27B share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 Micro has 8 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 27B has 28.