# Granite 4.2 3B vs Qwen3.5 397B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and Qwen3.5 397B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-qwen3-5-397b
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 5
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5 397B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Granite 4.2 3B only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Qwen3.5 397B leads overall 54.7 to 43.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 37.7 for Granite 4.2 3B and 59.8 for Qwen3.5 397B.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is GPQA in Knowledge, with scores of 54.8% and 88.4%.
- Granite 4.2 3B is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Alibaba |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Overall Score | null | 54.7 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 38 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.60 / $3.60 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 46.8 (Estimated · #71/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | 68.4% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 52.5% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 62% | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 56.8% | Coming soon |
| QwenClawBench | Coming soon | 51.8% | Coming soon |
| VITA-Bench | Coming soon | 43.7% | Coming soon |
| DeepPlanning | Coming soon | 37.6% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | Coming soon | 36.3% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 46.1% | Coming soon |
| MCP-Tasks | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | Coming soon | 74.0% | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | Coming soon | 46.76% | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | Coming soon | 14.2% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 50.2 (Estimated · #59/151)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | 83.6% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| SciCode | 24.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 76.2% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 50.9% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 63 (#27/48)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 79% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 88.6% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 80.8% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 84.7% | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | Coming soon | 65.6% | Coming soon |
| V* | Coming soon | 95.8% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 59.8 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LongBench v2 | Coming soon | 63.2% | Coming soon |
| AI-Needle | Coming soon | 68.7% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 50.2 (Estimated · #77/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 88.4% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | 87.8% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| SuperGPQA | Coming soon | 70.4% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Redux | Coming soon | 94.9% | Coming soon |
| C-Eval | Coming soon | 93% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 28.7% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 0 (#123/123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| IFEval | Coming soon | 92.6% | Coming soon |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 69.7 (#5/12)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU-ProX | Coming soon | 84.7% | Coming soon |
| NOVA-63 | Coming soon | 59.1% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 74.2 (Unranked · 5 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | 94.8% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 93.3% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Nov 2025 | Coming soon | 92.7% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 87.9% | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | Coming soon | 80.9% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Granite 4.2 3B or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Granite 4.2 3B and Qwen3.5 397B?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 37.7 for Granite 4.2 3B and 59.8 for Qwen3.5 397B.

### How many benchmarks does Granite 4.2 3B cover on BenchLM?

Granite 4.2 3B currently has 9 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Qwen3.5 397B cover on BenchLM?

Qwen3.5 397B currently has 38 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Qwen3.5 397B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-qwen3-5-397b)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Qwen3.5 397B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-qwen3-5-397b)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [Qwen3.5 397B profile](/models/qwen3-5-397b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)