# Granite 3.0 8b Instruct vs Qwen3.5 Plus

> Qwen3.5 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 31.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-0-8b-instruct-vs-qwen3-5-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.5 Plus leads 47.9 to 30.3.
- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.1 | 42.3 |
| Rank | 266 | 103 |
| Context | — | 1M |
| Input $/M | — | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | — | $2.40 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#297)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 29.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1113 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 35.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 621.92 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: —
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 0.54 |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 20.0 (#227)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: 32.0 (#67)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | — | 22% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1092 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 17% |
| DTBench | — | 80.5% |
| LMCA | — | 36.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 146.79 |

## Math

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 30.3 (#211)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: 47.9 (#55)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 86.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1143 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 21% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 2.1% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 29.1 (#233)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: 46.0 (#78)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 84.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 25.4% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1087 | — |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 27.4 (#271)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1037 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1063 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1060 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 56.2 (#271)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1088 | — |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 34.0 (#247)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: 42.9 (#109)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CL-bench | — | 19.8% |
| CL-bench Life | — | 12.4% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1122 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.0 8b Instruct: 31.2 (#280)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.0 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1096 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1071 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1063 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.0 8b Instruct better than Qwen3.5 Plus?

Qwen3.5 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 31.1 on the Noometry Index.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.0 8b Instruct and Qwen3.5 Plus share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.0 8b Instruct has 14 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 Plus has 15.