GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) vs Granite 4.2 3B

Which is better for the money: GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) 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-6.1 Sol (Medium)On the frontier

Intelligence: 47.80
Total cost: $361

IBMGranite 4.2 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 9.10
Total cost: $14.9

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 38.7 points higher (47.8 vs 9.1) but costs 24× as much to run the benchmark ($361 vs $14.9; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) when you need intelligence above 9.1, and Granite 4.2 3B when 9.1 is enough.

Metric	GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium)	Granite 4.2 3B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	47.8	9.1	−81.0% Granite 4.2 3B is 81.0% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$361.37	$14.91	−95.9% Granite 4.2 3B is 95.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	14.35s	35.30s	+146.0% Granite 4.2 3B is 146.0% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$0.03 / $0.12
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Granite 4.2 3B vs GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium): 81.0% less intelligence, 95.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 146.0% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium): what beats it Granite 4.2 3B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
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-6.1 Sol (Medium)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-6-1-sol-medium/granite-4-2-3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-6-1-sol-medium/granite-4-2-3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill