DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) vs Granite 4.2 8B

Which is better for the money: DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24) by DeepSeek 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

DeepSeekDeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 8.50
Total cost: $25.4

IBMGranite 4.2 8BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 11.10
Total cost: $53.1

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Granite 4.2 8B scores 2.6 points higher (11.1 vs 8.5) but costs 2.1× as much to run the benchmark ($53.1 vs $25.4; mid-range vs budget cost classes). Pick Granite 4.2 8B when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24).

Metric	DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)	Granite 4.2 8B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	8.5	11.1	+30.6% Granite 4.2 8B is 30.6% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$25.37	$53.07	+109.2% Granite 4.2 8B is 2.1× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	11.84s	41.16s	+247.6% Granite 4.2 8B is 247.6% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.32 / $0.89	$0.06 / $0.25
Input modalities	Text	Text

Granite 4.2 8B vs DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): 30.6% more intelligence, 109.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 247.6% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24): what beats it Granite 4.2 8B: 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 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (High) scores 32.90 for $47.9.

DeepSeek V3 (Dec '24)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/deepseek-v3/granite-4-2-8b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/deepseek-v3/granite-4-2-8b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill