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

Which is better for the money: GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) by OpenAI or Granite 4.2 3B by IBM? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Sol (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 47.00
Total cost: $3465

IBMGranite 4.2 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 9.10
Total cost: $14.9

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) scores 37.9 points higher (47.0 vs 9.1) but costs 232× as much to run the benchmark ($3465 vs $14.9; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) when you need intelligence above 9.1, and Granite 4.2 3B when 9.1 is enough.

Metric	GPT-5.6 Sol (Max)	Granite 4.2 3B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	47.0	9.1	−80.6% Granite 4.2 3B is 80.6% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,464.84	$14.91	−99.6% Granite 4.2 3B is 99.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	106.87s	49.98s	−53.2% Granite 4.2 3B is 53.2% faster
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 (Max): 80.6% less intelligence, 99.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 53.2% faster end-to-end.

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

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
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 (Max)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/granite-4-2-3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-6-sol/granite-4-2-3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill