# Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

> Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-qwen2-5-72b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 8B scores higher in 7 categories and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 38.4 to 27.0.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $1.40 / $5.60 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 31.9 |
| Rank | 148 | 267 |
| Context | 131K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $1.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.25 | $5.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 33.2 (#260)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1292 |
| WeirdML | — | 16% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.8% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 55.9% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.1 (#133)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | — | 5.7% |
| BALROG | — | 16.2% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 35.8% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 22.3 (#199)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 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 4.2 8B: —
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 19.3 (#287)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 8.1% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 33% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1283 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 63.2% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 27.0 (#253)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | 1245 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 49.1% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 63.1% |
| Confabulations | — | 19.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 42.6% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 94.5% |
| MMLU | — | 85.3% |
| TriviaQA | — | 71.9% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 41.0 (#213)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | 1252 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1272 |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | 1264 |
| LMArena French | — | 1280 |
| LMArena German | — | 1234 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1180 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1256 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 65.5 (#221)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | 1254 |
| IFEval | — | 80.6% |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 38.9 (#188)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | 1282 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: 46.7 (#215)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1269 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | 1221 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | 1272 |
| WildBench | — | 80.2% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 31.9 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct lists at $1.40 and $5.60.

### Is Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen2.5 72B Instruct better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 131K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct has 43.