# Granite 4.2 3B vs Qwen3.8-27B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 3B and Qwen3.8-27B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-qwen3-8-27b
- 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 Qwen3.8-27B 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.
- Qwen3.8-27B has the larger published context window at 262K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8-27B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Alibaba |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Independent public score (not head-to-head) | null | 64.52 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 33 |
| 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
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 63.4 (Supported · #13/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 73.0% | Coming soon |
| CoWorkBench | Coming soon | 70.7% | Coming soon |
| JobBench | Coming soon | 33.4% | Coming soon |
| Agents' Last Exam | Coming soon | 42.9% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | Coming soon | 84.3% | Coming soon |
| WebArena-Verified | Coming soon | 64.8% | Coming soon |
| AndroidWorld | Coming soon | 81.9% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 58.4% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 53.9 (Supported · #43/151)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | 90.3% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| SciCode | 24.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 73.0% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 61.7% | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 42.3% | Coming soon |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 42.2% | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | Coming soon | 82.6% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 84.0% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 86.0% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 80 (#11/48)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MathVision | Coming soon | 90.0% | Coming soon |
| MathVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 94.6% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | Coming soon | 65.7% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |
| Vision2Web | Coming soon | 62.9% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 83.7% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 90.2% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 91.1% | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | Coming soon | 85.9% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 65.5% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 77.4 (#7/20)

### Knowledge

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 54.1 (Supported · #58/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 89.2% | Qwen3.8-27B |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 89.2% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 30.8% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 30.8% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 88.9% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 84.3% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: 84.7 (#45/123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | 79.5% | Qwen3.8-27B |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8-27B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8-27B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Is there enough evidence to pick between Granite 4.2 3B and Qwen3.8-27B?

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

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [Qwen3.8-27B profile](/models/qwen3-8-27b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)