# Granite 4.0 Micro vs Qwen Plus

> Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-0-micro-vs-qwen-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.0 Micro scores higher in 1 category and Qwen Plus in 4 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen Plus leads 27.4 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 28.3% for Granite 4.0 Micro and 48.1% for Qwen Plus.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Granite 4.0 Micro has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 29.0 | 37.1 |
| Rank | 318 | 210 |
| Context | 131K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.017 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.11 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 4.0 Micro: —
- Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | — | 1328 |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 19.2 (#265)
- Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 63.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1317 |
| DTBench | — | 81.1% |
| LMCA | — | 24% |

## Math

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 12.0 (#307)
- Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.8% | 17.8% |
| Omni-MATH | 20.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1326 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 65.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#304)
- Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 28.3% | 48.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | 39.5% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.7% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1328 |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.0 Micro: —
- Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1323 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 69.9 (#169)
- Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 84.9% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1303 |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.0 Micro: —
- Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1324 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#216)
- Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1293 |
| WildBench | 67% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1336 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.0 Micro better than Qwen Plus?

Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Granite 4.0 Micro or Qwen Plus?

Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 Micro and Qwen Plus share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 Micro has 8 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.