Claude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Granite 4.2 8B

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Granite 4.2 8B by IBM? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-10.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 53.90
Total cost: $2862

IBMGranite 4.2 8BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 5.10
Total cost: $46.9

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback) scores 48.8 points higher (53.9 vs 5.1) but costs 61× as much to run the benchmark ($2862 vs $46.9; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 5.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 5.1 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback)	Granite 4.2 8B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	53.9	5.1	−90.5% Granite 4.2 8B is 90.5% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,861.78	$46.88	−98.4% Granite 4.2 8B is 98.4% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	22.57s	19.15s	−15.2% Granite 4.2 8B is 15.2% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$8.00 / $40.0	$0.06 / $0.25
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Granite 4.2 8B vs Claude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback): 90.5% less intelligence, 98.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 15.2% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.2 (Low, Default Fallback): what beats it Granite 4.2 8B: what beats it

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-2-low/granite-4-2-8b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-2-low/granite-4-2-8b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill

Depends on your budget

Against the frontier

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