# Granite 3.0 8b Instruct vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

> Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.6 vs 31.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-0-8b-instruct-vs-qwen2-5-72b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 14

## Summary

- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 6 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads 46.7 to 31.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 35.4% for Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and 55.9% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.6 | 31.9 |
| Rank | 270 | 267 |
| Context | — | 131K |
| Input $/M | — | $1.40 |
| Output $/M | — | $5.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.7 (#301)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 29.3% | 45.8% |
| LMArena Coding | 1112 | 1292 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 35.4% | 55.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 16% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | — | 5.7% |
| BALROG | — | 16.2% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 35.8% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 20.9 (#230)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1092 | 1271 |
| DTBench | — | 62.9% |
| LMCA | — | 13.4% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 79.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 129 |
| ForecastBench | — | 57.5 |
| HellaSwag | — | 84.8% |
| PIQA | — | 82.6% |
| WinoGrande | — | 82.3% |

## Math

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 32.8 (#210)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1143 | 1283 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 8.1% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 33% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 63.2% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.6 (#236)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1087 | 1245 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 49.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 63.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 19.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 42.6% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 94.5% |
| MMLU | — | 85.3% |
| TriviaQA | — | 71.9% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 27.2 (#276)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1037 | 1252 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1063 | 1272 |
| LMArena Russian | 1060 | 1264 |
| LMArena French | — | 1280 |
| LMArena German | — | 1234 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1180 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1256 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 56.0 (#276)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1088 | 1254 |
| IFEval | — | 80.6% |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 34.0 (#252)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1122 | 1282 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#285)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1096 | 1269 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1071 | 1221 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1063 | 1272 |
| WildBench | — | 80.2% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.6 vs 31.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 33.2 versus 29.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has 14 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.