# Granite 4.2 8B vs o3-pro

> o3-pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.2 8B costs 326× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-4-2-8b-vs-o3-pro
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in long context, where o3-pro leads 72.2 to 40.3.
- Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $20 / $80 for o3-pro.
- o3-pro accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 131K.
- Granite 4.2 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 40.5 | 42.9 |
| Rank | 148 | 105 |
| Context | 131K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $20 |
| Output $/M | $0.25 | $80 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.5 (#137)
- o3-pro: 55.5 (#24)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | — | 84.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 58.2% |
| LMArena Coding | 1380 | — |

## Reasoning

- Granite 4.2 8B: 26.6 (#131)
- o3-pro: 23.8 (#171)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 4.9% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 72.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 59.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1329 | — |
| DTBench | — | 86.9% |
| LMCA | — | 38.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147.42 |

## Knowledge

- Granite 4.2 8B: 38.4 (#145)
- o3-pro: 29.5 (#238)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Confabulations | — | 14.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 23.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | — |

## Multilingual

- Granite 4.2 8B: 44.5 (#178)
- o3-pro: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1302 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1285 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 4.2 8B: 68.7 (#184)
- o3-pro: —

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1301 | — |

## Long Context

- Granite 4.2 8B: 40.3 (#159)
- o3-pro: 72.2 (#1)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 97.2% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1324 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 4.2 8B: 49.6 (#189)
- o3-pro: 57.1 (#133)

| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 8B | o3-pro |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1320 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1236 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 84.4% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1301 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 4.2 8B better than o3-pro?

o3-pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 40.5 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.2 8B costs 326× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Granite 4.2 8B or o3-pro?

Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; o3-pro lists at $20 and $80.

### Is Granite 4.2 8B or o3-pro better for coding?

o3-pro scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 40.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

o3-pro does, with 200K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 8B and o3-pro share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 8B has 11 scored results on Noometry and o3-pro has 12.