GPT-6 Astra (High) vs Granite 4.2 30B

Which is better for the money: GPT-6 Astra (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-6 Astra (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 50.90
Total cost: $2925

IBMGranite 4.2 30BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 12.70
Total cost: $111

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-6 Astra (High) scores 38.2 points higher (50.9 vs 12.7) but costs 26× as much to run the benchmark ($2925 vs $111; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-6 Astra (High) when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Granite 4.2 30B when 12.7 is enough.

Metric	GPT-6 Astra (High)	Granite 4.2 30B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	50.9	12.7	−75.0% Granite 4.2 30B is 75.0% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,925.01	$110.83	−96.2% Granite 4.2 30B is 96.2% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	60.20s	61.27s	+1.8% Granite 4.2 30B is 1.8% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.16 / $0.65
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Granite 4.2 30B vs GPT-6 Astra (High): 75.0% less intelligence, 96.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1.8% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-6 Astra (High): what beats it Granite 4.2 30B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-6 Astra (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Granite 4.2 30B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.

GPT-6 Astra (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-6-astra-high/granite-4-2-30b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-6-astra-high/granite-4-2-30b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill