Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 8B by IBM or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 34.3 points higher (45.4 vs 11.1) but costs 93× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $53.1; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 11.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 11.1 is enough.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 11.1 | 45.4 | +309.0% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 4.1× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $53.07 | $4,934.79 | +9198.6% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 93× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 52.08s | 64.02s | +22.9% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 22.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.25 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Granite 4.2 8B: 309.0% more intelligence, 9198.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 22.9% slower 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.
- Qwen3.8 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 8BQwen3.8 Max (0902)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/qwen3-8-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-8b/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill