# Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen3.5 397B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen3.5 397B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-qwen3-5-397b
- Last updated: October 15, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 9
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Qwen3.5 397B leads by point estimate. Conditional score ranges do not establish rank confidence. Choose using the category evidence and your own workload tests.

## Summary

- Qwen3.5 397B has the higher overall point estimate 55.45 to 33.4. Conditional score ranges do not establish rank confidence.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 15.7 for Granite 4.2 8B and 44.2 for Qwen3.5 397B.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SWE Multilingual in Coding, with scores of 30.8% and 69.3%.
- Granite 4.2 8B is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | IBM | Alibaba |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Overall Score | 33.4 | 55.45 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 14 | 62 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.60 / $3.60 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Directional only
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 15.7 (Estimated · #113/127)
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 44.2 (Estimated · #60/127)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 20.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | 58.1% | 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 | 69% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | Coming soon | 62.2% | 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: Not comparable
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 17.2 (Estimated · #125/150)
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 47.7% | 76.2% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| SWE-bench Pro | 19.1% | 50.9% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| SWE Multilingual | 30.8% | 69.3% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 20.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 73.2% | 83.6% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| SciCode | 36.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 32.2% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 52.5% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 56.8 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 74.9 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LongBench v2 | Coming soon | 63.2% | Coming soon |
| AI-Needle | Coming soon | 68.7% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 73.6 (#29/54)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU | Coming soon | 85.0% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 79% | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | Coming soon | 83.9% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 90.8% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 87.5% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (w/o subtitle) | Coming soon | 83.7% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 88.6% | Coming soon |
| We-Math | Coming soon | 87.9% | Coming soon |
| DynaMath | Coming soon | 86.3% | Coming soon |
| SimpleVQA | Coming soon | 67.1% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 80.8% | Coming soon |
| MMLongBench-Doc | Coming soon | 61.5% | Coming soon |
| CC-OCR | Coming soon | 82.0% | Coming soon |
| AI2D_TEST | Coming soon | 93.9% | Coming soon |
| CountBench | Coming soon | 97.2% | Coming soon |
| RefCOCO (avg) | Coming soon | 92.3% | Coming soon |
| ODINW13 | Coming soon | 47.0% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 67.5% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 84.7% | Coming soon |
| MLVU (M-Avg) | Coming soon | 86.7% | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | Coming soon | 65.6% | Coming soon |
| V* | Coming soon | 95.8% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Directional only
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 30.6 (Supported · #154/184)
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 53.2 (Estimated · #68/184)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 64.1% | 88.4% | Qwen3.5 397B |
| MMLU-Pro | 74.0% | 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 |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 93.8 (#5/17)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU-ProX | Coming soon | 84.7% | Coming soon |
| NOVA-63 | Coming soon | 59.1% | Coming soon |
| INCLUDE | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |
| PolyMath | Coming soon | 73.3% | Coming soon |
| MAXIFE | Coming soon | 88.2% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Granite 4.2 8B
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: 86.5 (#41/146)
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 79.9 (#57/146)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 79.3% | 76.5% | Granite 4.2 8B |
| IFEval | Coming soon | 92.6% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Granite 4.2 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.5 397B public-lane score: 81.7 (Unranked · 5 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen3.5 397B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME 2025 | 86.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 78.3% | 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 8B or Qwen3.5 397B?

Qwen3.5 397B has the higher overall point estimate. Conditional score ranges do not establish rank confidence.

### Where is the biggest gap between Granite 4.2 8B and Qwen3.5 397B?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 15.7 for Granite 4.2 8B and 44.2 for Qwen3.5 397B.

### How many benchmarks does Granite 4.2 8B cover on BenchLM?

Granite 4.2 8B currently has 14 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

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

Qwen3.5 397B currently has 62 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

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

## Explore More

- [Granite 4.2 8B profile](/models/granite-4-2-8b)
- [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)