# Granite 4.2 3B vs Qwen3.8 Max

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

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-qwen3-8-max
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 2
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Evidence is too thin for a benchmark verdict: Granite 4.2 3B and Qwen3.8 Max share only 2 sourced benchmark rows.

## Summary

- Only 2 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 Max has the lower published output-token price.
- Qwen3.8 Max has the larger published context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8 Max |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Alibaba |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Independent public score (not head-to-head) | null | 71.63 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 9 | 60 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | Pricing unavailable / Pricing unavailable |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 67.2 (Supported · #9/152)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| τ³-bench results | 45.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | 52.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 86.6% | Coming soon |
| CoWorkBench | Coming soon | 74.8% | Coming soon |
| JobBench | Coming soon | 53.4% | Coming soon |
| skillsBench | Coming soon | 70.2% | Coming soon |
| Agents' Last Exam | Coming soon | 52.4% | Coming soon |
| AutomationBench | Coming soon | 27.3% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Coming soon | 72.5% | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | Coming soon | 81.9% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | Coming soon | 56.2% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | Coming soon | 86.1% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Coming soon | 19.4% | Coming soon |
| WebArena-Verified | Coming soon | 66.8% | Coming soon |
| AndroidWorld | Coming soon | 85.3% | Coming soon |
| MobileWorld | Coming soon | 77.8% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 67.4% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 60.8 (Supported · #20/151)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 69.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | 24.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 86.6% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 67.7% | Coming soon |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 56.6% | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 55.9% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |
| MLS-Bench Lite | Coming soon | 41.0% | Coming soon |
| PaperBench | Coming soon | 93.0% | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | Coming soon | 81.2% | Coming soon |
| OpenHarmony Bench | Coming soon | 60.8% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 15.8% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 87.9% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 87.4 (#5/48)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 82.3% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 95.2% | Coming soon |
| MathVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 97.7% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | Coming soon | 82.0% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 91.3% | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench | Coming soon | 24.0% | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench w/ Python | Coming soon | 49.0% | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (MM) | Coming soon | 80.4% | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | Coming soon | 84.5% | Coming soon |
| Vision2Web | Coming soon | 69.0% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 88.4% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 93.5% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 92.1% | Coming soon |
| OCRBench V2 | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |
| CC-OCR | Coming soon | 79.6% | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | Coming soon | 88.0% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 77.8% | Coming soon |
| SimpleVQA | Coming soon | 75.0% | Coming soon |
| PerceptionBench | Coming soon | 63.5% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 90.4% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 88.7% | Coming soon |
| MMVU | Coming soon | 82.4% | Coming soon |
| MLVU (M-Avg) | Coming soon | 90.8% | Coming soon |
| LVBench | Coming soon | 81.8% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 86.5 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MRCRv2 | Coming soon | 92.9% | Coming soon |
| LongBench v2 | Coming soon | 66.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 68.8 (Supported · #17/183)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 54.8% | 92.6% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| MMLU-Pro | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 92.6% | Coming soon |
| HLE | Coming soon | 43.6% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 43.6% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 93.7% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 88.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Insufficient shared evidence
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 90.7 (#18/123)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 74.3% | 82.8% | Qwen3.8 Max |

### Mathematics

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

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3B | Qwen3.8 Max | 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 Max?

Not yet. The models share only 2 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 Max vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-qwen3-8-max)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Qwen3.8 Max vs Granite 4.2 30B](/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-qwen3-8-max)

## Explore More

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