# Grok-2 (Dec 2024) vs Qwen3 8B

> Grok-2 (Dec 2024) and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.7 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

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

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-2 (Dec 2024) scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3 8B in 3 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 8B leads 34.9 to 20.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 11.5% for Grok-2 (Dec 2024) and 56.1% for Qwen3 8B.
- Qwen3 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.7 | 33.7 |
| Rank | 239 | 238 |
| Context | — | 131K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.18 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.70 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): 33.3 (#258)
- Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 22.6% |
| WeirdML | 22.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 46.4% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1287 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): —
- Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |

## Reasoning

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): 16.9 (#299)
- Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 65.2% | 59.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 130.48 | 136.17 |
| SimpleBench | 22.7% | — |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 54.8% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1272 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 54.5% | — |
| LMCA | — | 8.8% |
| LiveBench | 54.3% | — |

## Math

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): 20.8 (#284)
- Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 11.5% | 56.1% |
| LiveBench Math | 54.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1283 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 63.5% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 0.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): 29.8 (#233)
- Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 53.8% | 56.8% |
| Confabulations | 20.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1254 | — |

## Multilingual

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): 43.1 (#188)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1282 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1289 | — |
| LMArena French | 1318 | — |
| LMArena German | 1287 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1244 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1237 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1286 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1281 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): 66.9 (#202)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 69.6% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1270 | — |

## Long Context

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): 38.8 (#190)
- Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1276 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok-2 (Dec 2024): 48.6 (#198)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Grok-2 (Dec 2024) | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1305 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1284 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 63.6% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1290 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 45.6% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok-2 (Dec 2024) better than Qwen3 8B?

Grok-2 (Dec 2024) and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.7 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Grok-2 (Dec 2024) or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (33.3 vs 34.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do Grok-2 (Dec 2024) and Qwen3 8B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-2 (Dec 2024) has 34 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.
