# Claude Opus 4.5 vs Granite 4.2 8B

> Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.2 8B costs 93× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-granite-4-2-8b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 11

## Summary

- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.5 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 writing & preference, where Claude Opus 4.5 leads 68.1 to 49.6.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.5.
- Claude Opus 4.5 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | IBM |
| Noometry Index | 50.5 | 40.5 |
| Rank | 47 | 148 |
| Context | 200K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $5 | $0.06 |
| Output $/M | $25 | $0.25 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4.5: 54.8 (#27)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1380 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 76.7% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 76.8% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1494 | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 70.7% | — |
| GSO | 26.5% | — |
| WeirdML | 63.7% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,025 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.77 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4.5: 47.3 (#12)
- Granite 4.2 8B: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 63.1% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 77.5% | — |
| GDPval | 45.5% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 3.8% | — |
| τ²-bench Airline | 84% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 24.7% | — |
| τ²-bench Retail | 79.6% | — |
| τ²-bench Telecom | 92.3% | — |
| Cybench | 82% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.8% | — |
| OSWorld | 66.3% | — |
| BALROG | 43.5% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1180 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 75% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 4,967 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4.5: 42.6 (#51)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1476 | 1329 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 37.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 62% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 80.2% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 52.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 80% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 12% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 11.9% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 14.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 22% | — |
| DTBench | 89.9% | — |
| LMCA | 44.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 150.09 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.7 | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4.5: 38.6 (#132)
- Granite 4.2 8B: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 34.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 4.9% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 86.1% | — |
| ProofBench | 36% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1463 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 20.7% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4.5: 56.5 (#44)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1487 | 1384 |
| GPQA Diamond | 86% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 25.2% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 45.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.9% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4.5: 31.4 (#107)
- Granite 4.2 8B: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GeoBench | 75% | — |
| VPCT | 40% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 28.3% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1462 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4.5: 54.3 (#47)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1438 | 1302 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1470 | 1366 |
| LMArena Russian | 1447 | 1285 |
| LMArena French | 1471 | — |
| LMArena German | 1449 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1416 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1424 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1458 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4.5: 77.5 (#19)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1478 | 1301 |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4.5: 46.5 (#22)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1480 | 1324 |
| CL-bench | 21.1% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4.5: 68.1 (#28)
- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1451 | 1320 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1445 | 1236 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1466 | 1301 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1687 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4.5 better than Granite 4.2 8B?

Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.2 8B costs 93× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 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; Claude Opus 4.5 lists at $5 and $25.

### Is Claude Opus 4.5 or Granite 4.2 8B better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 54.8 versus 40.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.5 does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.5 and Granite 4.2 8B share?

11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.5 has 69 scored results on Noometry and Granite 4.2 8B has 11.