# Granite 3.1 2b Instruct vs Qwen3 8B

> Granite 3.1 2b Instruct and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.6 vs 33.3), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-1-2b-instruct-vs-qwen3-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3 8B leads 36.1 to 30.3.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 32.6 | 33.3 |
| Rank | 243 | 237 |
| Context | — | 131K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.18 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.70 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 32.9 (#255)
- Qwen3 8B: 33.4 (#245)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 22.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1149 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: —
- Qwen3 8B: 29.9 (#71)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 21.0 (#206)
- Qwen3 8B: 16.1 (#299)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1138 | — |
| DTBench | — | 59.7% |
| LMCA | — | 8.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 136.17 |

## Math

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 30.6 (#206)
- Qwen3 8B: 33.3 (#176)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 56.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1159 | — |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 30.3 (#223)
- Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#164)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1131 | — |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 29.2 (#264)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1068 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1138 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1063 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 58.0 (#259)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1116 | — |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 35.0 (#239)
- Qwen3 8B: 37.8 (#205)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1155 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.1 2b Instruct: 34.3 (#269)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 2b Instruct | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1127 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1116 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1099 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.1 2b Instruct better than Qwen3 8B?

Granite 3.1 2b Instruct and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (32.6 vs 33.3), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Granite 3.1 2b Instruct or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (32.9 vs 33.4); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 2b Instruct and Qwen3 8B share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 2b Instruct has 12 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.