# Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen3 8B

> Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-qwen3-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 8B leads 26.6 to 16.6.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.18 / $0.70 for Qwen3 8B.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 33.7 |
| Rank | 148 | 238 |
| Context | 131K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.18 |
| Output $/M | $0.25 | $0.70 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
- Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 22.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
- Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | — |
| DTBench | — | 59.7% |
| LMCA | — | 8.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 136.17 |

## Math

- Granite 4.2 8B: —
- Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 56.1% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
- Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 56.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | — |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | — |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
- Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Qwen3 8B?

Granite 4.2 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.5 to 33.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen3 8B?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Qwen3 8B lists at $0.18 and $0.70.

### Is Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Granite 4.2 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.5 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 131K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen3 8B share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.