Granite 4.2 3B vs Qwen3.7 Plus
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 3B by IBM or Qwen3.7 Plus by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.7 Plus scores 16.1 points higher (25.2 vs 9.1) but costs 29× as much to run the benchmark ($428 vs $14.9; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.7 Plus when you need intelligence above 9.1, and Granite 4.2 3B when 9.1 is enough.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.7 Plus | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 9.1 | 25.2 | +176.9% Qwen3.7 Plus is 2.8× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $14.91 | $427.73 | +2768.7% Qwen3.7 Plus is 29× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 35.30s | 44.78s | +26.9% Qwen3.7 Plus is 26.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.03 / $0.12 | $0.40 / $1.60 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.7 Plus vs Granite 4.2 3B: 176.9% more intelligence, 2768.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 26.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Granite 4.2 3B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
- Qwen3.7 Plus is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Granite 4.2 3BQwen3.7 PlusToday'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-4-2-3b/qwen3-7-plus · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-3b/qwen3-7-plus?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill