Model comparison
Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen3-30B-A3B
Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 8B scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 40.3 to 31.0.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.12 / $0.50 for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
- Granite 4.2 8B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 41K.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 38.9 |
| Released | — | 2025-04-28 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 41K |
| Max output | 118K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.06 | $0.12 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $0.50 |
| Results tracked | 11 | 32 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 8B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1416 |
| SciCode | — | 33.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 29.8% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.2 8B: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 41.4% |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 8B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1398 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 8% |
| DTBench | — | 69.3% |
| LMCA | — | 22.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.63 |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 8B: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 47.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 70.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1394 |
Knowledge Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | 1396 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 70.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 12.3% |
Multilingual Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1433 |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | 1370 |
| LMArena French | — | 1418 |
| LMArena German | — | 1380 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1337 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1404 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | 1363 |
Long Context Granite 4.2 8B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | 1379 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 40.6% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | 1317 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | 1378 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75.3% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Qwen3-30B-A3B lists at $0.12 and $0.50.
Is Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?
Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 37.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Granite 4.2 8B does, with 131K tokens against 41K.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.