IBM Granite 4.2 8B vs inclusionAI Ling 3.1 Flash
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- Granite 4.2 8B is 1.4× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- Ling 3.1 Flash accepts longer prompts: 1M vs 131K tokens.
- Ling 3.1 Flash is the newer model (released 2026-10-02).
| Granite 4.2 8B | Ling 3.1 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | IBM | inclusionAI |
| Released | 2026-08-31 | 2026-10-02 |
| Input / 1M | $0.06 | $0.075 |
| Output / 1M | $0.15 | $0.225 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.015 | $0.015 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.082 | $0.112 |
| Context | 131K | 1M |
| Max output | 118K | 262K |
| Accepts | text | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 2 | 2 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $0.15 | $0.225 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | — | — |
Cost calculator
Granite 4.2 8B
$5.85 per month$0.20 per day
Ling 3.1 Flash
$7.88 per month$0.26 per day
Granite 4.2 8B saves $2.03 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare Granite 4.2 8B with