Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 8B by IBM or Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) scores 0.1 points higher (11.2 vs 11.1) but costs 6.2× as much to run the benchmark ($329 vs $53.1; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 11.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 11.1 is enough.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 11.1 | 11.2 | +0.9% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 0.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $53.07 | $328.86 | +519.7% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 6.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 52.36s | 46.17s | −11.8% Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) is 11.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.25 | $0.14 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.5 9B (Reasoning) vs Granite 4.2 8B: 0.9% more intelligence, 519.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 11.8% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Granite 4.2 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (High) scores 32.90 for $47.9.
- 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 8BQwen3.5 9B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-8b/qwen3-5-9b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-8b/qwen3-5-9b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill