Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Granite 4.2 8B
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, 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 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 42.5 points higher (53.6 vs 11.1) but costs 41× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $53.1; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 11.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 11.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Granite 4.2 8B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 11.1 | −79.3% Granite 4.2 8B is 79.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $53.07 | −97.6% Granite 4.2 8B is 97.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 36.61s | 46.99s | +28.4% Granite 4.2 8B is 28.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.06 / $0.25 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Granite 4.2 8B vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 79.3% less intelligence, 97.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 28.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- 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 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Granite 4.2 8BToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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