Model comparison

Granite 4.2 3b vs Qwen3.5 Plus

Qwen3.5 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 39.0 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 0 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 3b IBM

39.0

Rank #163 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 Plus

Alibaba (Qwen)

42.3

Rank #103 Confirmed

Summary

The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5 Plus leads 46.0 to 35.6.
Granite 4.2 3b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 3b and Qwen3.5 Plus specifications
	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
Provider	IBM	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	39.0	42.3
Released	—	2026-02-16
Weights	Open	Proprietary
Context window	—	1M
Max output	—	66K
Input $ / M tokens	—	$0.40
Output $ / M tokens	—	$2.40
Results tracked	11	15

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Coding	1363	—
ALE-Bench	—	621.92

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: —, Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
Vending-Bench 2	—	0.54

Reasoning Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136), Qwen3.5 Plus: 32.0 (#67)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
Chess Puzzles	—	22%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1308	—
Mystery Game Puzzles	—	17%
DTBench	—	80.5%
LMCA	—	36.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	146.79

Math Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: —, Qwen3.5 Plus: 47.9 (#55)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	86.7%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)	—	21%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)	—	2.1%

Knowledge Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169), Qwen3.5 Plus: 46.0 (#78)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
GPQA Diamond	—	84.8%
SimpleQA Verified	—	25.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	10.7%
LMArena Expert	1313	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Non-English	1268	—
LMArena Chinese	1268	—
LMArena Russian	1249	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Instruction Following	1271	—

Long Context Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179), Qwen3.5 Plus: 42.9 (#109)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
CL-bench	—	19.8%
CL-bench Life	—	12.4%
LMArena Longer Query	1293	—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 3b	Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Text	1295	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1215	—
LMArena Multi-Turn	1293	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Qwen3.5 Plus?