Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Granite 4.2 30b
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 41.4 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 7 categories and Granite 4.2 30b in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 26.7.
- Granite 4.2 30b has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 50.1 | 41.4 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | — |
| Max output | 128K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | — |
| Results tracked | 57 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.0 (#62), Granite 4.2 30b: 40.4 (#127)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1394 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1521 | — |
| SciCode | 46.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#26), Granite 4.2 30b: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| 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 (#40), Granite 4.2 30b: 26.7 (#114)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1485 | 1375 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| CritPt | 3.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| DTBench | 89.9% | — |
| LMCA | 46.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.25 | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
Math Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.9 (#41), Granite 4.2 30b: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1463 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.6 (#60), Granite 4.2 30b: 38.5 (#134)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1405 |
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#61), Granite 4.2 30b: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.6 (#39), Granite 4.2 30b: 47.4 (#146)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1340 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1415 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1342 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | — |
| LMArena German | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1419 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1465 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.6 (#23), Granite 4.2 30b: 71.3 (#150)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1346 |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#40), Granite 4.2 30b: 41.4 (#135)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1359 |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.4 (#22), Granite 4.2 30b: 54.3 (#147)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Granite 4.2 30b |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1363 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1294 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1340 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Granite 4.2 30b?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 41.4 on the Noometry Index.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Granite 4.2 30b better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.0 versus 40.4 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Granite 4.2 30b share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 30b has 11.