# Granite 4.2 30B vs Qwen3.5-9B (slim)

> Granite 4.2 30B and Qwen3.5-9B score within a point of each other for open-weight models you run yourself, 61 and 60.5 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-qwen3-5-9b.md (~9,250 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-qwen3-5-9b.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/granite-4-2-30b-vs-qwen3-5-9b
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-10
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Granite 4.2 30B and Qwen3.5-9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 60.5 (C). Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

- Granite 4.2 30B: C 61, rank #65 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/granite-4-2-30b.min.md
- Qwen3.5-9B: C 60.5, rank #87 of 160 open-weight models · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/qwen3-5-9b.min.md
- Granite 4.2 30B, good for Agents that want a documented, signed, Apache 2.0 reasoning model with tool calling on a 24 GB card Ahead on Reach, 90 against 85; Agent interface, 85 against 70; Documentation and upkeep, 87 against 34.
- Qwen3.5-9B, good for Agents that want a small multimodal tool-calling model on a laptop or a 16 GB GPU, under a plain licence

| Category | Granite 4.2 30B | Qwen3.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capability (35%) | pending | pending |
| Reach (25%) | 90 | 85 |
| Risk (20%) | 55 | 55 |
| Agent interface (10%) | 85 | 70 |
| Documentation and upkeep (10%) | 87 | 34 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Granite 4.2 30B | Qwen3.5-9B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | IBM | Alibaba (Qwen team) |
| Last release | 2026-09-04 | 2026-03-02 |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Documentation and upkeep, Granite 4.2 30B +53: Granite 4.2 30B 87 (Model card 17, Intended use (best for), limitations (ethical considerations and limitations), architecture, parameters (30B), context length (128K native) and 1…); Qwen3.5-9B 34 (Model card 14, it covers intended use, architecture, parameters, context and 201 languages but gives no limitations and no knowledge cut-off.)
- Agent interface, Granite 4.2 30B +15: Granite 4.2 30B 85 (Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, with roles, tools, tool responses, the thinking switch and low effort.); Qwen3.5-9B 70 (Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository.)
- Reach, Granite 4.2 30B +5: Granite 4.2 30B 90 (Memory 25, IBM's own 4-bit MLX build granite-4.2-30b-q4-mlx is 16.47 GB, and 16.47 GB × 1.2 = 19.8 GB, which fits 24 GB but not 16 GB.); Qwen3.5-9B 85 (Memory 30, Qwen publishes no quantised 9B, so the smallest 4-bit build from a runtime's own library is Ollama's qwen3.5:9b at 6.6 GB, about 7.9 GB with the fift…)