GPT-6 Astra (High) vs Granite 4.2 3B

Which is better for the money: GPT-6 Astra (High) by OpenAI or Granite 4.2 3B by IBM? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

OpenAIGPT-6 Astra (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 50.90
Total cost: $2925

IBMGranite 4.2 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 9.10
Total cost: $14.9

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-6 Astra (High) scores 41.8 points higher (50.9 vs 9.1) but costs 196× as much to run the benchmark ($2925 vs $14.9; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-6 Astra (High) when you need intelligence above 9.1, and Granite 4.2 3B when 9.1 is enough.

Metric	GPT-6 Astra (High)	Granite 4.2 3B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	50.9	9.1	−82.1% Granite 4.2 3B is 82.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,925.01	$14.91	−99.5% Granite 4.2 3B is 99.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	60.20s	59.94s	−0.4% Granite 4.2 3B is 0.4% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.03 / $0.12
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Granite 4.2 3B vs GPT-6 Astra (High): 82.1% less intelligence, 99.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 0.4% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-6 Astra (High): what beats it Granite 4.2 3B: 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 3B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.

GPT-6 Astra (High)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-astra-high/granite-4-2-3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-6-astra-high/granite-4-2-3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill