# Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen2.5-Max

> Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen2.5-Max score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.5 vs 40.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

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

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 8B scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen2.5-Max in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen2.5-Max leads 55.4 to 49.6.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 40.7 |
| Rank | 148 | 146 |
| Context | 131K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.25 | — |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
- Qwen2.5-Max: 41.8 (#117)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | 1359 |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 64.4% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
- Qwen2.5-Max: 25.6 (#147)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | 1360 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 51.4% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 67.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 132.53 |
| LiveBench | — | 62.3% |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Qwen2.5-Max: 36.9 (#162)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | — | 58.4% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1369 |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
- Qwen2.5-Max: 35.3 (#186)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | 1337 |
| Confabulations | — | 21.8% |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
- Qwen2.5-Max: 48.1 (#146)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | 1352 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1382 |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | 1353 |
| LMArena French | — | 1396 |
| LMArena German | — | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1300 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1377 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
- Qwen2.5-Max: 71.3 (#152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | 1335 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 75.3% |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
- Qwen2.5-Max: 41.4 (#142)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | 1358 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
- Qwen2.5-Max: 55.4 (#146)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | 1367 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | 1339 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | 1364 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 72.9% |
| LiveBench Language | — | 56.3% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Qwen2.5-Max?

Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen2.5-Max score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.5 vs 40.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen2.5-Max better for coding?

Qwen2.5-Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.8 versus 40.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen2.5-Max share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5-Max has 27.