Model comparison
Granite 4.2 30b vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.0 to 41.8 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 30b scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multilingual, where Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads 52.1 to 47.3.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 41.8 | 43.0 |
| Released | — | 2025-09 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | — | 131K |
| Max output | — | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $2 |
| Results tracked | 11 | 25 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 41.0 (#126), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 42.5 (#98)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1396 | 1440 |
Reasoning Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 27.8 (#112), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 31.1 (#81)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1374 | 1428 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 66.7% |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 30b: —, Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 38.8 (#126)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1440 |
Knowledge Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 39.1 (#138), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.8 (#106)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1406 | 1417 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.6% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 9.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 63% |
Multilingual Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 47.3 (#151), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1340 | 1407 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1414 | 1460 |
| LMArena Russian | 1343 | 1404 |
| LMArena French | — | 1413 |
| LMArena German | — | 1417 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1395 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1364 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1435 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Granite 4.2 30b: 71.2 (#155), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 70.8 (#159)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1347 | 1389 |
| IFEval | — | 81% |
Long Context Granite 4.2 30b leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 41.4 (#140), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#223)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1359 | 1403 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 55.6% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Granite 4.2 30b: 53.8 (#156), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.0 (#121)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 30b | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1361 | 1417 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1288 | 1334 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1339 | 1416 |
| WildBench | — | 80.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 30b better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.0 to 41.8 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 4.2 30b or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.5 versus 41.0 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 30b and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 30b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.