GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) vs Granite 4.2 8B

Which is better for the money: GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) by OpenAI or Granite 4.2 8B by IBM? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

OpenAIGPT-6.1 Sol (Medium)On the frontier

Intelligence: 47.80
Total cost: $361

IBMGranite 4.2 8BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 11.10
Total cost: $53.1

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 36.7 points higher (47.8 vs 11.1) but costs 6.8× as much to run the benchmark ($361 vs $53.1; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) when you need intelligence above 11.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 11.1 is enough.

Metric	GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium)	Granite 4.2 8B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	47.8	11.1	−76.8% Granite 4.2 8B is 76.8% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$361.37	$53.07	−85.3% Granite 4.2 8B is 85.3% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	13.90s	52.08s	+274.7% Granite 4.2 8B is 274.7% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$0.06 / $0.25
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Granite 4.2 8B vs GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium): 76.8% less intelligence, 85.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 274.7% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium): what beats it Granite 4.2 8B: 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 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (High) scores 32.90 for $47.9.

GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium)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-6-1-sol-medium/granite-4-2-8b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-6-1-sol-medium/granite-4-2-8b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill