Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Granite 4.2 30B
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Granite 4.2 30B 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 28.1 points higher (40.8 vs 12.7) but costs 5.6× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $111; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Granite 4.2 30B when 12.7 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Granite 4.2 30B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 12.7 | −68.9% Granite 4.2 30B is 68.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $110.83 | −82.2% Granite 4.2 30B is 82.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.11s | 54.96s | +799.5% Granite 4.2 30B is 799.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.16 / $0.65 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Granite 4.2 30B vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 68.9% less intelligence, 82.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 799.5% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Granite 4.2 30B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Granite 4.2 30BToday'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-sonnet-5-5-medium/granite-4-2-30b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/granite-4-2-30b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill