Model comparison
Granite 4.2 3b vs Qwen3 8B
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 25.0 to 16.1.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 33.3 |
| Released | — | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | — | 131K |
| Max output | — | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.18 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.70 |
| Results tracked | 11 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146), Qwen3 8B: 33.4 (#245)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 22.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Qwen3 8B: 29.9 (#71)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136), Qwen3 8B: 16.1 (#299)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1308 | — |
| DTBench | — | 59.7% |
| LMCA | — | 8.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 136.17 |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Qwen3 8B: 33.3 (#176)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 56.1% |
Knowledge Too close to call
Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#164)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1313 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1268 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1271 | — |
Long Context Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179), Qwen3 8B: 37.8 (#205)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1293 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1295 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1215 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1293 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Qwen3 8B?
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 4.2 3b or Qwen3 8B better for coding?
Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 33.4 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Qwen3 8B share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.