AI model comparison
Granite 4.2 8B vs Hy3
Side by side comparison of Granite 4.2 8B and Hy3 on pricing, benchmark scores, context window, and more.
Granite 4.2 8B is a dense reasoning model from IBM. It is suited for mathematics, code generation, multilingual dialogue, and agentic workflows that need multi-step reasoning.
- Input / 1M
- $0.06
- Output / 1M
- $0.25
- Context
- 131K
Hy3 is a 295B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model from Tencent (21B active, 192 experts with top-8 routing) built for reasoning, agentic workflows, and real-world production use.
- Input / 1M
- $0.08
- Output / 1M
- $0.33
- Context
- 262K
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At a glance
Quick verdict
How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.
Lower price
Granite 4.2 8B
1.3x cheaper for a typical chat
Higher intelligence score
Not available
Not enough benchmark data
Larger context window
Hy3
262K vs 131K tokens
Newer release
Granite 4.2 8B
Released August 31, 2026
Benchmarks
Benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
Granite 4.2 8B5.1Coding index
Granite 4.2 8B22.4Agentic index
Granite 4.2 8B1.3Pricing
Granite 4.2 8B vs Hy3 API pricing
Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.06 | $0.08 |
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.25 | $0.33 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | $0.02 | $0.02 |
| Cache writePer 1M tokens | Not available | Not available |
What it costs in practice
Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.
Chat message
2K in, 500 out
Granite 4.2 8B$0.25Coding task
30K in, 4K out
Granite 4.2 8B$2.80$1.45 cachedLong document summary
150K in, 2K out
Granite 4.2 8B$9.50$2.75 cachedSpecs
Context window and capabilities
How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 131K tokens | 262K tokens |
| Max output | 118K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Input types | Text | Text |
| Output types | Text | Text |
| Reasoning effort levels | High, Low, None | High, Low, None |
| Default reasoning effort | High | High |
| Release date | August 31, 2026 | July 6, 2026 |
Features
Supported features
API features available for each model.
| Metric | Granite 4.2 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Tool calling | Supported | Supported |
| Structured outputs | Supported | Supported |
| JSON mode | Supported | Supported |
| Reasoning | Supported | Supported |
| Temperature | Supported | Supported |
| Stop sequences | Supported | Supported |
| Deterministic seed | Supported | Supported |
| Verbosity control | Not supported | Not supported |
Keep exploring
More on these models
Other head-to-heads, the full model page, and the alternatives list for each model.
Granite 4.2 8BView full model details- Granite 4.2 8B vs Nemotron 3.5 Super VL
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Muse Glimmer 30B
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Command A+
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Mistral Small 4
- Granite 4.2 8B vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Granite 4.2 8B vs DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731
- Granite 4.2 8B vs Muse Spark 1.3 Contributor
- Hy3 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017
- Hy3 vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Hy3 vs GLM 5.3 Flash
- Hy3 vs GPT-6 Luna
- Hy3 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Hy3 vs Step 5 Preview
- Hy3 vs MiniMax M3.1 Flash
- Hy3 vs GPT-5.6 Luna
- Hy3 vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- Hy3 vs DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731
- Hy3 vs GLM 5.3
- Hy3 vs Claude Haiku 5.5
- Hy3 vs MiMo-V2.6-Flash
- Hy3 vs Muse Spark 1.3 Contributor
- Hy3 vs Solar Mini 4
- Hy3 vs Hy4
- Hy3 vs Qwen3.8 Flash
- Hy3 vs GPT-6 Luna Pro
- Hy3 vs Gemma 4 31B
- Hy3 vs gpt-oss-120b
- Hy3 vs Gemma 4 26B A4B
- Hy3 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
- Hy3 vs DeepSeek V3.2
- Hy3 vs GPT-4o-mini
- Hy3 vs Ling 3.1 Flash
- Hy3 vs Mistral Small 4
Our take
Granite 4.2 8B is 1.3x cheaper for a typical chat. Hy3 has the larger context window (262K vs 131K tokens). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 8B or Hy3 cheaper?
Granite 4.2 8B is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Granite 4.2 8B costs $0.06 per 1M input tokens and $0.25 per 1M output tokens, while Hy3 costs $0.08 per 1M input tokens and $0.33 per 1M output tokens.
Which has a bigger context window, Granite 4.2 8B or Hy3?
Hy3 supports up to 262K tokens of context, compared with 131K for Granite 4.2 8B.
Can I use Granite 4.2 8B and Hy3 at the same time?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Granite 4.2 8B and Hy3 answer side by side and keep the better response.
Why choose? Ask both.
Send one prompt to Granite 4.2 8B and Hy3 at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.