Pyyan / Compare / Granite 4.2 vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
Granite 4.2 vs Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
2 of 5Open-Weight Models · verified 2 Sept 2026
Granite 4.2IBMcurrentQwen3.8-Flash-NextAlibabacurrent
| Specification | Granite 4.2 | Qwen3.8-Flash-Next |
|---|---|---|
| Summary | 3B, 8B and 30B under Apache 2.0, with a switch that turns the reasoning off. | The most downloaded thing on Hugging Face right now, and a stated Qwen4 preview. |
| Context | 131K, 512K extension claimed | 262K native, ~1M extended |
| Input ($/Mtok) | Weights only | $0.15 |
| Output ($/Mtok) | Weights only | $0.47 |
| Licence | Apache 2.0 | Open weights |
| Max output | 32K | 32K |
| Parameters | 3B, 8B and 30B dense | 125B total, 6B active |
| Released | 25 Aug 2026 | 26 Aug 2026 |
| Model ID | ibm-granite/granite-4.2 | Qwen/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next |
| Category | Open-Weight Models | Open-Weight Models |
| Official | — | — |
Highlighted rows are where these differ.
Granite 4.2
- Three sizes, 3B, 8B and 30B, all dense and all Apache 2.0
- A thinking switch, so one checkpoint either reasons step by step or answers directly
- 30B scores 57.0 on SWE-bench Verified and 81.38 on RULER at 128K; the 8B scores 47.67
Best for enterprise on your own hardware.
Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
- 125B total parameters with only 6B active per token
- Alibaba describes it as a preview of the Qwen4 architecture
- Top of the Hugging Face trending list, with a GGUF build close behind it
Best for open weights at speed.