IBM: Granite 4.2 8B comes out ahead on the data we track: 4 advantages and none for Qwen: Qwen3 8B.
| Spec | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen: Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Ibm Granite | Qwen |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.06 | $0.12 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.25 | $0.46 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.11 | $0.20 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 79% | 69% |
| Context window | 131K tokens (~197 pages) | 131K tokens (~197 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 23% | 23% |
| Max output per response | 118K tokens (~88,500 words) | 8K tokens (~6,100 words) |
| Input types | text | text |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2026-08-31 | 2025-04-28 |
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen: Qwen3 8B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $9.50 | $17.88 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B saves $8.38 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $9.70 | $18.59 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B saves $8.89 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $10.20 | $19.50 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B saves $9.30 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $6.30 | $12.09 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B saves $5.79 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $3.25 | $6.30 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B saves $3.05 |
| Capability | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B | Qwen: Qwen3 8B | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | — | — | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | — | — | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | — | — | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | ✓ Yes | — | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
| Date | Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-22 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B | $0.06 | $0.25 |
| 2026-09-21 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B | $0.10 | $0.15 |
| 2026-09-09 | IBM: Granite 4.2 8B | $0.06 | $0.25 |
| 2026-08-06 | Qwen: Qwen3 8B | $0.12 | $0.46 |
No advantage on the data we track — pick it for provider preference or output quality on your own prompts.
IBM: Granite 4.2 8B comes out ahead on the data we track: 4 advantages and none for Qwen: Qwen3 8B.
IBM: Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper: $0.11 vs $0.20 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 47% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $9.50 against $17.88.
IBM: Granite 4.2 8B costs $0.06 per 1M input tokens and $0.25 per 1M output tokens; Qwen: Qwen3 8B costs $0.12 input and $0.46 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Both take 131K tokens per request — roughly 197 pages of text.
Tool calling — IBM: Granite 4.2 8B: yes, Qwen: Qwen3 8B: yes. JSON-schema structured output — IBM: Granite 4.2 8B: yes, Qwen: Qwen3 8B: yes.
Neither accepts image input — both are text-in models.
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
IBM: Granite 4.2 8B can write up to 118K tokens (about 88,500 words) per response; Qwen: Qwen3 8B up to 8K (about 6,100 words).
IBM: Granite 4.2 8B was listed on 2026-08-31; Qwen: Qwen3 8B on 2025-04-28.
IBM: Granite 4.2 8B: input price cut 40% ($0.10 → $0.06/1M), output price raised 40% ($0.15 → $0.25/1M) on 2026-09-22 (3 price changes since 2026-09-01). Qwen: Qwen3 8B: input price raised 57% ($0.05 → $0.12/1M), output price raised 12% ($0.40 → $0.46/1M) on 2026-08-06.
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