Model comparison
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.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)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.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen2.5-Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 40.7 |
| Released | — | 2025-01-25 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 131K | — |
| Max output | 118K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.06 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.25 | — |
| Results tracked | 11 | 27 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Qwen2.5-Max leads
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 leads
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 Not comparable
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 leads
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 Qwen2.5-Max leads
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 Qwen2.5-Max leads
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 Qwen2.5-Max leads
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 Qwen2.5-Max leads
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% |
Frequently asked questions
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.