# Claude Opus 4.5 vs Granite 4.2 3B

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Opus 4.5 and Granite 4.2 3B across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-granite-4-2-3b
- Last updated: September 10, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 6
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Granite 4.2 3B only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Opus 4.5 leads overall 58.41 to 43.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 72.1 for Claude Opus 4.5 and 37.7 for Granite 4.2 3B.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is GPQA in Knowledge, with scores of 87% and 54.8%.
- Granite 4.2 3B is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Claude Opus 4.5 also has the larger context window at 200K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | IBM |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 200K | 128K |
| Overall Score | 58.41 | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 45 | 9 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $0.00 / $0.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 43.2 (Estimated · #97/152)
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 66.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld | 66.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | 59.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| QwenClawBench | 52.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| τ³-bench results | 70.2% | 45.8% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| VITA-Bench | 23.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepPlanning | 26.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | 43.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 42.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP-Tasks | 71.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | 76.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 50.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 64.23% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| JobBench | 32.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BFCL v4 | Coming soon | 52.4% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 56.6 (Estimated · #36/151)
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 84.8% | 69.7% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 57.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | 77.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | 43.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 24.1% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 23.5 (#46/48)
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 70.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MathVision | 74.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 68.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | 84.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | 45.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| V* | 67.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 72.1 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: 37.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| LongBench v2 | 64.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AI-Needle | 74% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 53.9 (Estimated · #61/183)
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 87% | 54.8% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| SuperGPQA | 70.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 89.5% | 67.8% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| MMLU-Redux | 96.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| C-Eval | 92.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 30.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 39.5 (#105/123)
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFEval | 90.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| IFBench | 58% | 74.3% | Granite 4.2 3B |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 82.9 (#2/12)
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU-ProX | 85.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NOVA-63 | 56.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Opus 4.5 public-lane score: 58.3 (#6/7)
- Granite 4.2 3B public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | Granite 4.2 3B | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | 95.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2025 | 92.9% | 66.7% | Claude Opus 4.5 |
| HMMT Nov 2025 | 93.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 85.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | 84.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 20.690% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 4.167% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| AIME 2025 | Coming soon | 78.3% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Opus 4.5 or Granite 4.2 3B?

Claude Opus 4.5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Opus 4.5 and Granite 4.2 3B?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 72.1 for Claude Opus 4.5 and 37.7 for Granite 4.2 3B.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Opus 4.5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Opus 4.5 currently has 45 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Granite 4.2 3B cover on BenchLM?

Granite 4.2 3B currently has 9 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.5 Thinking](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-claude-opus-4-5-thinking)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Claude Opus 4.5 Thinking](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-thinking-vs-granite-4-2-3b)
- [Claude Opus 4.5 vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/claude-opus-4-5-vs-granite-4-2-8b)
- [Granite 4.2 3B vs Granite 4.2 8B](/compare/granite-4-2-3b-vs-granite-4-2-8b)

## Explore More

- [Claude Opus 4.5 profile](/models/claude-opus-4-5)
- [Granite 4.2 3B profile](/models/granite-4-2-3b)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)