GPT-6 Sol (Low) vs Granite 4.2 3B

Which is better for the money: GPT-6 Sol (Low) 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 Sol (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 34.20
Total cost: $269

IBMGranite 4.2 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 9.10
Total cost: $14.9

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-6 Sol (Low) scores 25.1 points higher (34.2 vs 9.1) but costs 18× as much to run the benchmark ($269 vs $14.9; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-6 Sol (Low) when you need intelligence above 9.1, and Granite 4.2 3B when 9.1 is enough.

Metric	GPT-6 Sol (Low)	Granite 4.2 3B	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	34.2	9.1	−73.4% Granite 4.2 3B is 73.4% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$268.73	$14.91	−94.5% Granite 4.2 3B is 94.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	6.34s	35.30s	+456.8% Granite 4.2 3B is 456.8% 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 Sol (Low): 73.4% less intelligence, 94.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 456.8% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-6 Sol (Low): what beats it Granite 4.2 3B: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-6 Sol (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
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 Sol (Low)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-sol-low/granite-4-2-3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-6-sol-low/granite-4-2-3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill