Model comparison

GPT-5 vs Granite 4.2 8B

GPT-5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.9 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.2 8B costs 32× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5 OpenAI

50.9

Rank #45 Confirmed

Granite 4.2 8B IBM

40.5

Rank #148 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 scores higher in 7 categories and Granite 4.2 8B in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in long context, where GPT-5 leads 69.5 to 40.3.
  • Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $1.25 / $10 for GPT-5.
  • GPT-5 accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 131K.
  • Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-5 and Granite 4.2 8B specifications
GPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
ProviderOpenAIIBM
Noometry Index50.940.5
Released2025-08-07—
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window400K131K
Max output128K118K
Input $ / M tokens$1.25$0.06
Output $ / M tokens$10$0.25
Results tracked6911

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Category by category

Coding GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 50.3 (#47), Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
LMArena Coding14361380
SWE-bench Verified73.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)65%—
Aider Polyglot88%—
LMArena WebDev1418—
SciCode42.9%—
GSO6.9%—
WeirdML60.7%—
ALE-Bench1,162—
AlgoTune1.67—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-5: 33.1 (#56), Granite 4.2 8B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
Terminal-Bench49.6%—
GDPval34.8%—
Remote Labor Index1.7%—
DeepResearch Bench49.6%—
BALROG32.8%—
LMArena Search1133—
METR Time Horizons69.6%—

Reasoning GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 38.3 (#64), Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
LMArena Hard Prompts14161329
ARC-AGI-29.9%—
SimpleBench56.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark72.7%—
ARC-AGI-165.7%—
CritPt12.6%—
Chess Puzzles37%—
EnigmaEval10.5%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
Mystery Game Puzzles23%—
DTBench90.7%—
LMCA40%—
Epoch Capabilities Index150—
ForecastBench61.4—

Math Not comparable

GPT-5: 55.0 (#44), Granite 4.2 8B: —

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)55.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 422%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202591.4%—
ProofBench18%—
Omni-MATH64.7%—
LMArena Math1407—
MATH Level 598.1%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)12.5%—

Knowledge GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 56.6 (#43), Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
LMArena Expert14191384
GPQA Diamond86.2%—
Humanity's Last Exam25.3%—
SimpleQA Verified50.1%—
MMLU-Pro86.3%—
Confabulations10.3%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate14.7%—
GPQA (HELM)79.2%—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5: 46.8 (#13), Granite 4.2 8B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
LMArena Vision1232—
GeoBench81%—
VPCT66%—

Multilingual GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 51.4 (#110), Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
LMArena Non-English13971302
LMArena Chinese14221366
LMArena Russian14061285
LMArena French1410—
LMArena German1416—
LMArena Japanese1409—
LMArena Korean1360—
LMArena Spanish1399—

Instruction Following GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 73.8 (#113), Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
LMArena Instruction Following13881301
IFEval87.5%—

Long Context GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 69.5 (#2), Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
LMArena Longer Query13991324
Fiction.LiveBench97.2%—

Writing & Preference GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 63.4 (#65), Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Granite 4.2 8B
LMArena Text14061320
LMArena Creative Writing13651236
LMArena Multi-Turn14261301
Short-Story Creative Writing86%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1627—
WildBench85.7%—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5 better than Granite 4.2 8B?

GPT-5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.9 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.2 8B costs 32× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5 or Granite 4.2 8B?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; GPT-5 lists at $1.25 and $10.

Is GPT-5 or Granite 4.2 8B better for coding?

GPT-5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.3 versus 40.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-5 does, with 400K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-5 and Granite 4.2 8B share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 has 69 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 8B has 11.

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