GLM-5.3 (Low) vs Granite 4.2 3B

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Low) by Z AI 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.

Trade-off

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 34.30
Total cost: $1013

IBMGranite 4.2 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 9.10
Total cost: $14.9

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Low) scores 25.2 points higher (34.3 vs 9.1) but costs 68× as much to run the benchmark ($1013 vs $14.9; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Low) when you need intelligence above 9.1, and Granite 4.2 3B when 9.1 is enough.

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Low)	Granite 4.2 3B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	34.3	9.1	−73.5% Granite 4.2 3B is 73.5% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$1,012.50	$14.91	−98.5% Granite 4.2 3B is 98.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	31.07s	49.98s	+60.9% Granite 4.2 3B is 60.9% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$0.03 / $0.12
Input modalities	Text	Text

Granite 4.2 3B vs GLM-5.3 (Low): 73.5% less intelligence, 98.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 60.9% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Low): what beats it Granite 4.2 3B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.3 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Granite 4.2 3B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.

GLM-5.3 (Low)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/glm-5-3-low/granite-4-2-3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3-low/granite-4-2-3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill