Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Granite 4.2 8B
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 29.7 points higher (40.8 vs 11.1) but costs 12× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $53.1; 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 11.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 11.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Granite 4.2 8B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 11.1 | −72.8% Granite 4.2 8B is 72.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $53.07 | −91.5% Granite 4.2 8B is 91.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.20s | 52.08s | +740.0% Granite 4.2 8B is 740.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.06 / $0.25 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Granite 4.2 8B vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 72.8% less intelligence, 91.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 740.0% 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 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (High) scores 32.90 for $47.9.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Granite 4.2 8BToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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