Model comparison
Granite 4.2 30b vs Qwen3.5 27B
Granite 4.2 30b and Qwen3.5 27B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.8 vs 41.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 30b scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.5 27B in 4 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3.5 27B leads 59.3 to 53.8.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 41.8 | 41.9 |
| Released | — | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | — | 262K |
| Max output | — | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $2.40 |
| Results tracked | 11 | 28 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 30b leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 41.0 (#126), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.9 (#168)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1396 | 1427 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1358 |
| WeirdML | — | 39.5% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 349.45 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.2 30b: —, Qwen3.5 27B: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 201.98 |
Reasoning Too close to call
Granite 4.2 30b: 27.8 (#112), Qwen3.5 27B: 27.5 (#117)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1374 | 1414 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 47.9% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 45.5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.4% |
| LMCA | — | 34% |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 30b: —, Qwen3.5 27B: 38.8 (#127)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 56.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1429 |
Knowledge Granite 4.2 30b leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 39.1 (#138), Qwen3.5 27B: 38.0 (#150)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1406 | 1428 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 12.1% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Granite 4.2 30b: —, Qwen3.5 27B: 39.4 (#59)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1241 |
Multilingual Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 47.3 (#151), Qwen3.5 27B: 50.8 (#115)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1340 | 1390 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1414 | 1478 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1390 |
| LMArena French | — | 1410 |
| LMArena German | — | 1393 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1345 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1358 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1407 |
Instruction Following Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 71.2 (#155), Qwen3.5 27B: 73.5 (#119)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1347 | 1393 |
Long Context Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 41.4 (#140), Qwen3.5 27B: 43.1 (#106)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1359 | 1413 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 27B leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 53.8 (#156), Qwen3.5 27B: 59.3 (#111)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3.5 27B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1361 | 1409 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1288 | 1362 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1339 | 1410 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 30b better than Qwen3.5 27B?
Granite 4.2 30b and Qwen3.5 27B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.8 vs 41.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Granite 4.2 30b or Qwen3.5 27B better for coding?
Granite 4.2 30b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.0 versus 38.9 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 30b and Qwen3.5 27B share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 30b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 27B has 28.