Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Granite 4.2 8B vs Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct

Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct's 55.7 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 4969 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Granite 4.2 8B C

Best for Agents that want a documented, signed, Apache 2.0 reasoning model with tool calling on a 16 GB machine

Ahead on

  • Reach, 95 against 90
  • Agent interface, 85 against 75
  • Documentation and upkeep, 92 against 31

Watch for

No safety results published for it

Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct C

Best for Coding agents and local coding tools that want an open model on one 24 GB GPU or a 32 GB Mac, with a plain licence.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No safety results, prompt-injection guidance or security contact, though it's meant to run commands

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Documentation and upkeep Granite 4.2 8B +61

Granite 4.2 8B 92

Model card 17, Intended use (best for), limitations (ethical considerations and limitations), architecture, parameters (8B), context length (128K native) and 12 tested languages are on the card. Training data 20, IBM's disclosure file for the 8B lists the datasets used in pre-training and post-training as machine-readable metadata, and the card describes the three training stages. Last change 20, the last commit, on 20 October 2026, replaced model.safetensors.index.json (titled "granite-4.2 index file fix"), 21 days before this check. Responsiveness 20, Of the 5 discussions that aren't pull requests (13 September to 5 November 2026), 4 have a reply from an ibm-granite member. Version policy 5, Granite 4.1 8B stays in its own repository and 4.2 came out in new ones. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture, the 131,072-token context and the thinking switch. 17 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 5 + 10 = 92.

Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct 31

Model card 11 of 20, intended use, architecture, parameters and context are there, but limitations, languages and a knowledge cut-off aren't. Training data 5, the blog describes the mix in general terms without a cut-off. Last change 5, config.json was corrected on 3 December 2025, 336 days before the 4 November 2026 check. Responsiveness 0, counted by script on 4 November, none of 26 discussions has a reply from Alibaba's Qwen staff, and the one Hub-flagged member who replied is the independent quantiser bartowski. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 5, the files now agree with the card, but reports about the parser and an attention error wait without a reply. 11 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 31.

Agent interface Granite 4.2 8B +10

Granite 4.2 8B 85

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository, with roles, tools, tool responses, the thinking switch and low effort. Tool-calling format 25, the card has tool-calling sections for vLLM and SGLang, declares tools with OpenAI's function schema and names the parser to use, qwen3_coder, which both runtimes ship in the released versions read. Trained tool calling 20, the template loops over every entry in an assistant turn's tool_calls, so it renders several calls in one turn, and the card names tool calling and agentic workflows as what it's best for. Structured output 0, the card doesn't document JSON or JSON Schema output or how to ask for it. Reasoning control 10, the card documents thinking on by default, non-thinking and low-effort modes per request through the template (enable_thinking and low_effort), with the reasoning returned apart from the answer. Context 10, 131,072 tokens natively per the card and config.json. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct 75

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository. Tool-calling format 25, the card shows how tools are declared, the README names the parser for SGLang and vLLM, and the repository ships it. Trained tool calling 20, the template renders several calls a turn and the training used agent reinforcement learning. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 0, the model has no thinking. Context 10, 262,144 tokens native, with the YaRN extension not counted. Template, parser and config unchanged on 4 November. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 75.

Reach Granite 4.2 8B +5

Granite 4.2 8B 95

Memory 30, IBM's own 4-bit MLX build granite-4.2-8b-q4-mlx is 4.95 GB, and 4.95 GB × 1.2 = 5.9 GB, within 8 GB. Its Q4_0 GGUF is 5.06 GB and Ollama's library build granite4.2:8b (5.3 GB) fits 8 GB too. Runtimes 25, Released versions run the granite architecture in llama.cpp (granite, b12242), vLLM (GraniteForCausalLM in the v0.33.0 registry), SGLang (granite.py at v0.5.23), Transformers (v5.22.2) and Ollama (its own granite4.2 library entry, 8b tag). Builds 15, IBM publishes FP8, MXFP4 and NVFP4 safetensors builds, a GGUF repository with Q4_0 to Q8_0 and BF16 files, and 4-bit, 8-bit and BF16 MLX builds, so quantised builds at two precisions or more. Terms 15, Apache 2.0, an OSI-approved licence, with no use policy or other terms added on the card. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for the BF16, FP8, MXFP4, NVFP4, GGUF and MLX repositories, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 0, Hugging Face maps one inference provider (DeepInfra, live), short of the two the line needs. 30 + 25 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 95.

Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct 90

Memory 25 of 30, LM Studio's MLX 4-bit build is 17.2 GB and Ollama's 4-bit build 19 GB, 21 to 23 GB with a fifth added, which fits 24 GB. Runtimes 25, released Transformers, vLLM, SGLang and llama.cpp run the qwen3_moe architecture, vLLM and SGLang carry a qwen3_coder parser, Ollama's released build pins a llama.cpp that has qwen3moe, and LM Studio's catalogue carries it. Builds 10 of 15, Alibaba's only quantised build is FP8. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 with nothing added. Download 10, neither repository is gated. Hosted 5, Featherless AI on Hugging Face (live on 4 November 2026) plus SiliconFlow and Amazon Bedrock on OpenRouter (per 21 October, not re-read) serve it. 25 + 25 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 90.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGranite 4.2 8BQwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-InstructEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259590Granite 4.2 8B +5
Risk20%205555even
Agent interface10%108575Granite 4.2 8B +10
Documentation and upkeep10%109231Granite 4.2 8B +61
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 55.7/100

Facts side by side

FactGranite 4.2 8BQwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorIBMAlibaba (Qwen team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-202025-12-03
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

Granite 4.2 8B

IBM's mid-size reasoning cousin, with the same strengths as the 3B. It runs in every runtime we count from IBM's own builds on a 16 GB machine, is signed, plain Apache 2.0, and comes with a disclosure of its training data. No safety results are published and structured output isn't documented.

Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct

A coding model with 3.3B of 30.5B parameters active per token, for agentic coding tools, repository reading and fill-in-the-middle without a thinking step. It needs about 21 to 23 GB at 4 bits under Apache 2.0, and several providers host it. It runs commands for agents with no safety results or prompt-injection guidance, and Alibaba hasn't answered its discussions.

Before you call either

Granite 4.2 8B

  1. Start it with ollama run granite4.2:8b, or llama-server -hf ibm-granite/granite-4.2-8b-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja
  2. With vLLM 0.32.0 or later leave out --reasoning-parser-plugin, since the parser is built in, and use --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder
  3. Thinking is on by default. Pass enable_thinking false to turn it off or low_effort true for short reasoning
  4. The context is 131,072 tokens. The card's 512K extension isn't documented
  5. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented
  6. IBM recommends Granite Guardian beside it to flag risky inputs and outputs

Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct

  1. Quickest start is ollama run qwen3-coder:30b, 19 GB
  2. On our reference machine use BF16 with vllm serve Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct --max-model-len 262144 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder, 61 GB of weights fits the GPU share
  3. Use the qwen3_coder parser in vLLM or SGLang, not hermes, since calls come back as function and parameter blocks rather than JSON
  4. Pass tool-call arguments in the history as objects, the template iterates them as a mapping
  5. Sampling per the card is temperature 0.7, top_p 0.8, top_k 20 and repetition_penalty 1.05, with up to 65,536 output tokens
  6. For code completion use the fill-in-the-middle tokens <|fim_prefix|>, <|fim_suffix|> and <|fim_middle|> from Qwen's README
  7. Sandbox the commands and files it touches, since nothing from Alibaba covers prompt injection

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct?

Granite 4.2 8B scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct's 55.7 (C), and leads in 3 of 4 scored categories.

Other comparisons with Granite 4.2 8B or Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct

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