Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Granite 4.2 8B
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) by Anthropic or Granite 4.2 8B by IBM? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 30.7 points higher (41.8 vs 11.1) but costs 130× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $53.1; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 11.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 11.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Granite 4.2 8B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.8 | 11.1 | −73.4% Granite 4.2 8B is 73.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $53.07 | −99.2% Granite 4.2 8B is 99.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 37.99s | 52.08s | +37.1% Granite 4.2 8B is 37.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.06 / $0.25 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Granite 4.2 8B vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max): 73.4% less intelligence, 99.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 37.1% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Granite 4.2 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (High) scores 32.90 for $47.9.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Granite 4.2 8BToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/granite-4-2-8b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/granite-4-2-8b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill