GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) vs Granite 4.2 3B

Which is better for the money: GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) by OpenAI or Granite 4.2 3B by IBM? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.

Trade-off

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Sol (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 33.50
Total cost: $637

IBMGranite 4.2 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 9.10
Total cost: $14.9

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) scores 24.4 points higher (33.5 vs 9.1) but costs 43× as much to run the benchmark ($637 vs $14.9; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) when you need intelligence above 9.1, and Granite 4.2 3B when 9.1 is enough.

Metric	GPT-5.6 Sol (Low)	Granite 4.2 3B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	33.5	9.1	−72.8% Granite 4.2 3B is 72.8% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$637.28	$14.91	−97.7% Granite 4.2 3B is 97.7% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	8.17s	35.30s	+332.1% Granite 4.2 3B is 332.1% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$4.00 / $20.0	$0.03 / $0.12
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Granite 4.2 3B vs GPT-5.6 Sol (Low): 72.8% less intelligence, 97.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 332.1% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-5.6 Sol (Low): what beats it Granite 4.2 3B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Granite 4.2 3B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.

GPT-5.6 Sol (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/gpt-5-6-sol-low/granite-4-2-3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-6-sol-low/granite-4-2-3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill