GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Granite 4.2 30B

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

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 44.80
Total cost: $2503

IBMGranite 4.2 30BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 12.70
Total cost: $111

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Max) scores 32.1 points higher (44.8 vs 12.7) but costs 23× as much to run the benchmark ($2503 vs $111; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Granite 4.2 30B when 12.7 is enough.

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Max)	Granite 4.2 30B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	44.8	12.7	−71.7% Granite 4.2 30B is 71.7% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,503.48	$110.83	−95.6% Granite 4.2 30B is 95.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	28.79s	51.51s	+78.9% Granite 4.2 30B is 78.9% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$0.16 / $0.65
Input modalities	Text	Text

Granite 4.2 30B vs GLM-5.3 (Max): 71.7% less intelligence, 95.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 78.9% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Max): what beats it Granite 4.2 30B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.3 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Granite 4.2 30B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.

GLM-5.3 (Max)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/glm-5-3/granite-4-2-30b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3/granite-4-2-30b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill