GPT-5.6 Luna (High) vs Granite 4.2 8B

Which is better for the money: GPT-5.6 Luna (High) by OpenAI or Granite 4.2 8B by IBM? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Luna (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 32.10
Total cost: $108

IBMGranite 4.2 8BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 11.10
Total cost: $53.1

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-5.6 Luna (High) scores 21.0 points higher (32.1 vs 11.1) but costs 2.0× as much to run the benchmark ($108 vs $53.1; both mid-range class). Pick GPT-5.6 Luna (High) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Granite 4.2 8B.

Metric	GPT-5.6 Luna (High)	Granite 4.2 8B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	32.1	11.1	−65.4% Granite 4.2 8B is 65.4% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$108.15	$53.07	−50.9% Granite 4.2 8B is 50.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	14.62s	63.67s	+335.5% Granite 4.2 8B is 335.5% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.20 / $1.20	$0.06 / $0.25
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Granite 4.2 8B vs GPT-5.6 Luna (High): 65.4% less intelligence, 50.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 335.5% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-5.6 Luna (High): what beats it Granite 4.2 8B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-5.6 Luna (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
Granite 4.2 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (High) scores 32.90 for $47.9.

GPT-5.6 Luna (High)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/gpt-5-6-luna-high/granite-4-2-8b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-6-luna-high/granite-4-2-8b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill