GLM-5.3 (Max) vs Granite 4.2 8B

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

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 44.80
Total cost: $2503

IBMGranite 4.2 8BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 11.10
Total cost: $53.1

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Max) scores 33.7 points higher (44.8 vs 11.1) but costs 47× as much to run the benchmark ($2503 vs $53.1; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 11.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 11.1 is enough.

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Max)	Granite 4.2 8B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	44.8	11.1	−75.2% Granite 4.2 8B is 75.2% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,503.48	$53.07	−97.9% Granite 4.2 8B is 97.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	28.73s	52.08s	+81.3% Granite 4.2 8B is 81.3% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$0.06 / $0.25
Input modalities	Text	Text

Granite 4.2 8B vs GLM-5.3 (Max): 75.2% less intelligence, 97.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 81.3% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Max): what beats it Granite 4.2 8B: 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 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (High) scores 32.90 for $47.9.

GLM-5.3 (Max)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/glm-5-3/granite-4-2-8b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3/granite-4-2-8b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill