Model comparison
Granite 4.0 Micro vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.0 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 21× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.0 Micro scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct in 5 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads 41.8 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MMLU-Pro: 39.5% for Granite 4.0 Micro and 78.6% for Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $2 for Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 131K.
Side by side
| Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 29.0 | 43.0 |
| Released | 2025-10-02 | 2025-09 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 131K |
| Max output | 118K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.017 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.11 | $2 |
| Results tracked | 8 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 42.5 (#98)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | — | 1440 |
Reasoning Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 19.2 (#265), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 31.1 (#81)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 66.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1428 |
Math Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 12.0 (#307), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 38.8 (#126)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | 20.9% | 46.7% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.8% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1440 |
Knowledge Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#304), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.8 (#106)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 39.5% | 78.6% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.7% | 63% |
| GPQA Diamond | 28.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 9.3% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1417 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1407 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1460 |
| LMArena French | — | 1413 |
| LMArena German | — | 1417 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1395 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1364 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1404 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1435 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Granite 4.0 Micro: 69.9 (#169), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 70.8 (#159)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 84.9% | 81% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1389 |
Long Context Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#223)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 55.6% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1403 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#216), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.0 (#121)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| WildBench | 67% | 80.7% |
| LMArena Text | — | 1417 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1334 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1416 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.0 Micro better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.0 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 21× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Granite 4.0 Micro or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct lists at $0.50 and $2.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 Micro and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?
5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 Micro has 8 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.