Granite 4.2 3B vs Solar Pro 4

Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 3B by IBM or Solar Pro 4 by Upstage? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

IBMGranite 4.2 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 9.10
Total cost: $14.9

UpstageSolar Pro 4Off the frontier

Intelligence: 26.60
Total cost: $737

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Solar Pro 4 scores 17.5 points higher (26.6 vs 9.1) but costs 49× as much to run the benchmark ($737 vs $14.9; premium vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Solar Pro 4 when you need intelligence above 9.1, and Granite 4.2 3B when 9.1 is enough.

Metric	Granite 4.2 3B	Solar Pro 4	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	9.1	26.6	+192.3% Solar Pro 4 is 2.9× more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$14.91	$736.82	+4841.8% Solar Pro 4 is 49× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	49.98s	Not reported	— not comparable
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.03 / $0.12	$0.30 / $1.20
Input modalities	Text	Text

Solar Pro 4 vs Granite 4.2 3B: 192.3% more intelligence, 4841.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and end-to-end time not fully reported.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Granite 4.2 3B: what beats it Solar Pro 4: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Granite 4.2 3B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Solar Pro 4 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.

Granite 4.2 3BSolar Pro 4Today'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-4-2-3b/solar-pro4 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-3b/solar-pro4?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill