# Granite 4.0 Micro vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

> Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 60× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen2.5 72B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-0-micro-vs-qwen2-5-72b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 7

## Summary

- They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.0 Micro scores higher in 1 category and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads 27.0 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MMLU-Pro: 39.5% for Granite 4.0 Micro and 63.1% for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $1.40 / $5.60 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 131K.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 29.0 | 31.9 |
| Rank | 318 | 267 |
| Context | 131K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.017 | $1.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.11 | $5.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.0 Micro: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | — | 16% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.8% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1292 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 55.9% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 4.0 Micro: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | — | 5.7% |
| BALROG | — | 16.2% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 35.8% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 19.2 (#265)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 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 4.0 Micro: 12.0 (#307)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.8% | 8.1% |
| Omni-MATH | 20.9% | 33% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1283 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 63.2% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#304)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 28.3% | 49.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | 39.5% | 63.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.7% | 42.6% |
| Confabulations | — | 19.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1245 |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 94.5% |
| MMLU | — | 85.3% |
| TriviaQA | — | 71.9% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.0 Micro: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1252 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1272 |
| LMArena French | — | 1280 |
| LMArena German | — | 1234 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1180 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1264 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1256 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 69.9 (#169)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 84.9% | 80.6% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1254 |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.0 Micro: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1282 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#216)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| WildBench | 67% | 80.2% |
| LMArena Text | — | 1269 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1221 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1272 |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.0 Micro better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 60× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen2.5 72B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Granite 4.0 Micro or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct lists at $1.40 and $5.60.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 Micro and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

7 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 Micro has 8 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.