GPT-5.6 Sol (High) vs Granite 4.2 30B

Which is better for the money: GPT-5.6 Sol (High) by OpenAI or Granite 4.2 30B 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 Sol (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 42.30
Total cost: $1487

IBMGranite 4.2 30BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 12.70
Total cost: $111

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-5.6 Sol (High) scores 29.6 points higher (42.3 vs 12.7) but costs 13× as much to run the benchmark ($1487 vs $111; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.6 Sol (High) when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Granite 4.2 30B when 12.7 is enough.

Metric	GPT-5.6 Sol (High)	Granite 4.2 30B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	42.3	12.7	−70.0% Granite 4.2 30B is 70.0% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$1,487.34	$110.83	−92.5% Granite 4.2 30B is 92.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	13.86s	57.71s	+316.4% Granite 4.2 30B is 316.4% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$4.00 / $20.0	$0.16 / $0.65
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Granite 4.2 30B vs GPT-5.6 Sol (High): 70.0% less intelligence, 92.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 316.4% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-5.6 Sol (High): what beats it Granite 4.2 30B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-5.6 Sol (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Granite 4.2 30B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.

GPT-5.6 Sol (High)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/gpt-5-6-sol-high/granite-4-2-30b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-6-sol-high/granite-4-2-30b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill