Granite 4.2 30B vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 30B by IBM or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 32.7 points higher (45.4 vs 12.7) but costs 45× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $111; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Granite 4.2 30B when 12.7 is enough.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 30B | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.7 | 45.4 | +257.5% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 3.6× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $110.83 | $4,934.79 | +4352.6% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 45× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 57.71s | 64.07s | +11.0% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 11.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.16 / $0.65 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Granite 4.2 30B: 257.5% more intelligence, 4352.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 11.0% slower end-to-end.
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.
- Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Granite 4.2 30BQwen3.8 Max (0902)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/qwen3-8-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-30b/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill