Granite 4.2 30B vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 30B by IBM or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Granite 4.2 30B
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Granite 4.2 30B: 11.8% less intelligence, 196.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 23.4% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 30B | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.7 | 11.2 | −11.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 11.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $110.83 | $328.86 | +196.7% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 3.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 54.96s | 42.11s | −23.4% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 23.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.16 / $0.65 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Granite 4.2 30B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
- Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Granite 4.2 30BQwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-30b/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-30b/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill