# Granite 4.2 3B vs Qwen3.6-27B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and Qwen3.6-27B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-qwen3-6-27b
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 3
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Evidence is too thin for a benchmark verdict: Granite 4.2 3B and Qwen3.6-27B share only 3 sourced benchmark rows.

## Summary

- Only 3 shared sourced benchmark rows are available. That is not enough for a broad capability verdict, so this mirror does not name an overall winner.
- Qwen3.6-27B has the larger published context window at 262K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.6-27B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Alibaba |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Independent public score (not head-to-head) | null | 47.69 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 38 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6-27B public-lane score: 30.9 (Supported · #140/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.6-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 59.3% | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 72.4% | Coming soon |
| QwenClawBench | Coming soon | 53.4% | Coming soon |
| QwenWebBench | Coming soon | 1487 | Coming soon |
| AndroidWorld | Coming soon | 70.3% | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | Coming soon | 54.84% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6-27B public-lane score: 41.7 (Supported · #107/151)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.6-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | 24.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Verified | Coming soon | 77.2% | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | Coming soon | 71.3% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 53.5% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 59.3% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench | Coming soon | 83.9% | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 36.2% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6-27B public-lane score: 51.9 (#35/48)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.6-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU | Coming soon | 82.9% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 75.8% | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | Coming soon | 84.1% | Coming soon |
| DynaMath | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |
| MStar | Coming soon | 81.4% | Coming soon |
| SimpleVQA | Coming soon | 56.1% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 78.4% | Coming soon |
| CC-OCR | Coming soon | 81.2% | Coming soon |
| CountBench | Coming soon | 97.8% | Coming soon |
| RefCOCO (avg) | Coming soon | 92.5% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 62.5% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 87.7% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 84.4% | Coming soon |
| MLVU (M-Avg) | Coming soon | 86.6% | Coming soon |
| V* | Coming soon | 94.7% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.6-27B public-lane score: 74.1 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6-27B public-lane score: 46.6 (Estimated · #101/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.6-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 87.8% | Qwen3.6-27B |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | 86.2% | Qwen3.6-27B |
| MMLU-Redux | Coming soon | 93.5% | Coming soon |
| SuperGPQA | Coming soon | 66% | Coming soon |
| C-Eval | Coming soon | 91.4% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 24% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6-27B public-lane score: 82.4 (#51/123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.6-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.6-27B public-lane score: 72.8 (Unranked · 5 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.6-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | 93.8% | Qwen3.6-27B |
| HMMT Nov 2025 | Coming soon | 90.7% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 84.3% | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | Coming soon | 80.8% | Coming soon |
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 94.1% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Is there enough evidence to pick between Granite 4.2 3B and Qwen3.6-27B?

Not yet. The models share only 3 sourced benchmark rows, so this mirror reports the available measurements and metadata without naming a broad winner.

### What can I compare safely on this page?

Published pricing, context windows, model type, and individual shared benchmark rows are directly comparable. Independent overall scores and non-overlapping benchmark coverage are labeled separately and should not be read as a controlled head-to-head result.

## Related Comparisons

- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Qwen3.6-27B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-qwen3-6-27b)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Qwen3.6-27B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-qwen3-6-27b)

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [Qwen3.6-27B profile](/models/qwen3-6-27b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)