Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 8B by IBM or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-09-10.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Granite 4.2 8B
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Granite 4.2 8B: 14.4% less intelligence, 797.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 77.1% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 11.8 | 10.1 | −14.4% Qwen3 Coder Next is 14.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $53.07 | $476.03 | +797.0% Qwen3 Coder Next is 9.0× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 26.12s | 5.99s | −77.1% Qwen3 Coder Next is 77.1% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.25 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Granite 4.2 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.5 scores 22.30 for $42.6.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GLM-5.3-Flash scores 41.90 for $280.
Granite 4.2 8BQwen3 Coder NextToday'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-4-2-8b/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-8b/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill