DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) vs Granite 4.2 3B

Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) by DeepSeek or Granite 4.2 3B by IBM? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Clear winner

DeepSeekDeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 8.50
Total cost: $25.4

IBMGranite 4.2 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 9.10
Total cost: $14.9

Verdict

Pick Granite 4.2 3B

Granite 4.2 3B vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): 7.1% more intelligence, 41.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 293.8% slower end-to-end.

Metric	DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)	Granite 4.2 3B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	8.5	9.1	+7.1% Granite 4.2 3B is 7.1% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$25.37	$14.91	−41.2% Granite 4.2 3B is 41.2% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	11.84s	46.62s	+293.8% Granite 4.2 3B is 293.8% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.32 / $0.89	$0.03 / $0.12
Input modalities	Text	Text

Open this matchup in the interactive picker DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): what beats it Granite 4.2 3B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Granite 4.2 3B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.

DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)Granite 4.2 3BToday'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/deepseek-v3/granite-4-2-3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v3/granite-4-2-3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill