Granite 4.2 30B vs Kimi K3 (Max)

Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 30B by IBM or Kimi K3 (Max) by Kimi? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

IBMGranite 4.2 30BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 12.70
Total cost: $111

KimiKimi K3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 43.60
Total cost: $3658

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Kimi K3 (Max) scores 30.9 points higher (43.6 vs 12.7) but costs 33× as much to run the benchmark ($3658 vs $111; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Kimi K3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 12.7, and Granite 4.2 30B when 12.7 is enough.

Metric	Granite 4.2 30B	Kimi K3 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	12.7	43.6	+243.3% Kimi K3 (Max) is 3.4× more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$110.83	$3,658.07	+3200.6% Kimi K3 (Max) is 33× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	51.51s	56.93s	+10.5% Kimi K3 (Max) is 10.5% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.16 / $0.65	$3.00 / $15.0
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

Kimi K3 (Max) vs Granite 4.2 30B: 243.3% more intelligence, 3200.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 10.5% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Granite 4.2 30B: what beats it Kimi K3 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Granite 4.2 30B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
Kimi K3 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.

Granite 4.2 30BKimi K3 (Max)Today'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/granite-4-2-30b/kimi-k3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-30b/kimi-k3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill