Granite 4.2 8B vs Kimi K3 (Max)

Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 8B 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 8BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 11.10
Total cost: $53.1

KimiKimi K3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 43.60
Total cost: $3658

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Kimi K3 (Max) scores 32.5 points higher (43.6 vs 11.1) but costs 69× as much to run the benchmark ($3658 vs $53.1; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Kimi K3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 11.1, and Granite 4.2 8B when 11.1 is enough.

Metric	Granite 4.2 8B	Kimi K3 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	11.1	43.6	+292.8% Kimi K3 (Max) is 3.9× more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$53.07	$3,658.07	+6792.9% Kimi K3 (Max) is 69× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	46.99s	56.93s	+21.2% Kimi K3 (Max) is 21.2% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.06 / $0.25	$3.00 / $15.0
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

Kimi K3 (Max) vs Granite 4.2 8B: 292.8% more intelligence, 6792.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 21.2% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Granite 4.2 8B: what beats it Kimi K3 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Granite 4.2 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (High) scores 32.90 for $47.9.
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 8BKimi 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-4-2-8b/kimi-k3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-8b/kimi-k3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill