# Granite 3.1 8b Instruct vs Qwen3.5-Flash

> Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-1-8b-instruct-vs-qwen3-5-flash
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-Flash in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3.5-Flash leads 57.9 to 35.5.
- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 32.4 | 42.5 |
| Rank | 258 | 112 |
| Context | — | 1M |
| Input $/M | — | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.40 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 34.5 (#233)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 34.2 (#242)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1186 | 1412 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1244 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 221.8 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 24.1 (#120)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: —

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 462.69 |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 22.1 (#207)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 33.7 (#72)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1145 | 1403 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 21% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 20% |
| DTBench | — | 82.9% |
| LMCA | — | 29.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 143.98 |

## Math

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 33.0 (#209)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 37.4 (#158)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1152 | 1407 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 84.4% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 6.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#220)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 43.2 (#93)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1142 | 1407 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 82.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 20.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.5% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 30.9 (#260)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 50.5 (#121)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1099 | 1385 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1145 | 1446 |
| LMArena Russian | 1092 | 1379 |
| LMArena French | — | 1412 |
| LMArena German | — | 1390 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1368 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1344 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1400 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 58.6 (#259)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 72.6 (#139)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1131 | 1374 |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.2 (#241)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 42.4 (#124)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1162 | 1392 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.5 (#266)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 57.9 (#122)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1150 | 1397 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1129 | 1343 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1108 | 1393 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct better than Qwen3.5-Flash?

Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct or Qwen3.5-Flash better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (34.5 vs 34.2); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and Qwen3.5-Flash share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-Flash has 32.