Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Granite 4.0 Micro
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 147× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 5 categories and Granite 4.0 Micro in 0 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 51.7 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 85.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 2.8% for Granite 4.0 Micro.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.
- Granite 4.0 Micro has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 50.3 | 29.0 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2025-10-02 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 131K |
| Max output | 128K | 118K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.017 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $0.11 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 8 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Granite 4.0 Micro: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1522 | — |
| SciCode | 46.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Granite 4.0 Micro: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 43% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), Granite 4.0 Micro: 19.2 (#265)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | 0% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| CritPt | 3.1% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| DTBench | 89.9% | — |
| LMCA | 46.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.24 | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Granite 4.0 Micro: 12.0 (#307)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | 2.8% |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 20.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1462 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#304)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | 28.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 39.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 30.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Granite 4.0 Micro: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Granite 4.0 Micro: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | — |
| LMArena French | 1465 | — |
| LMArena German | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1420 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Granite 4.0 Micro: 69.9 (#169)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | — | 84.9% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1475 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Granite 4.0 Micro: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | — |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#216)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.0 Micro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| WildBench | — | 67% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Granite 4.0 Micro?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 147× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Granite 4.0 Micro?
Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Granite 4.0 Micro share?
3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.0 Micro has 8.