Model comparison

Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen3.5 Plus

Qwen3.5 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.2 8B costs 8.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 12, 2026. 0 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.2 8B IBM

40.5

Rank #148 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 Plus

Alibaba (Qwen)

42.9

Rank #106 Confirmed

Summary

The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5 Plus leads 46.0 to 38.4.
Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $2.40 for Qwen3.5 Plus.
Qwen3.5 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen3.5 Plus specifications
	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
Provider	IBM	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	40.5	42.9
Released	—	2026-02-16
Weights	Open	Proprietary
Context window	131K	1M
Max output	118K	66K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.06	$0.40
Output $ / M tokens	$0.25	$2.40
Results tracked	11	15

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Coding	1380	—
ALE-Bench	—	621.92

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: —, Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
Vending-Bench 2	—	0.54

Reasoning Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131), Qwen3.5 Plus: 32.8 (#74)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
Chess Puzzles	—	22%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1329	—
Mystery Game Puzzles	—	17%
DTBench	—	80.5%
LMCA	—	36.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	146.78

Math Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: —, Qwen3.5 Plus: 49.6 (#61)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	86.7%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)	—	21%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)	—	2.1%

Knowledge Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145), Qwen3.5 Plus: 46.0 (#83)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
GPQA Diamond	—	84.8%
SimpleQA Verified	—	25.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	10.7%
LMArena Expert	1384	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Non-English	1302	—
LMArena Chinese	1366	—
LMArena Russian	1285	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Instruction Following	1301	—

Long Context Qwen3.5 Plus leads

Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159), Qwen3.5 Plus: 43.0 (#113)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
CL-bench	—	19.8%
CL-bench Life	—	12.4%
LMArena Longer Query	1324	—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Granite 4.2 8B	Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Text	1320	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1236	—
LMArena Multi-Turn	1301	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.2 8B better than Qwen3.5 Plus?

Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen3.5 Plus?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 Plus lists at $0.40 and $2.40.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen3.5 Plus share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 Plus has 15.