Granite 4.2 8B vs Mistral Large 3

Which is better for the money: Granite 4.2 8B by IBM or Mistral Large 3 by Mistral? 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

MistralMistral Large 3Off the frontier

Intelligence: 9.30
Total cost: $46.4

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Granite 4.2 8B scores 1.8 points higher (11.1 vs 9.3) but costs 1.1× as much to run the benchmark ($53.1 vs $46.4; mid-range vs budget cost classes). Pick Granite 4.2 8B when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mistral Large 3.

Metric	Granite 4.2 8B	Mistral Large 3	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	11.1	9.3	−16.2% Mistral Large 3 is 16.2% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$53.07	$46.41	−12.5% Mistral Large 3 is 12.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	46.99s	7.23s	−84.6% Mistral Large 3 is 84.6% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.06 / $0.25	$0.50 / $1.50
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image

Mistral Large 3 vs Granite 4.2 8B: 16.2% less intelligence, 12.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 84.6% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Granite 4.2 8B: what beats it Mistral Large 3: 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.
Mistral Large 3 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.

Granite 4.2 8BMistral Large 3Today'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/mistral-large-3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/granite-4-2-8b/mistral-large-3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill