IBM Granite 4.2 8B vs Poolside Laguna XS 2.1
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
- Both cost about the same at a typical 3:1 input/output mix.
- Laguna XS 2.1 accepts longer prompts: 262K vs 131K tokens.
- Granite 4.2 8B is the newer model (released 2026-08-31).
| Granite 4.2 8B | Laguna XS 2.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | IBM | Poolside |
| Released | 2026-08-31 | 2026-07-02 |
| Input / 1M | $0.06 | $0.06 |
| Output / 1M | $0.15 | $0.12 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.015 | $0.03 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $0.082 | $0.075 |
| Context | 131K | 262K |
| Max output | 118K | 33K |
| Accepts | text | text |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 2 | 1 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $0.15 | $0.12 |
| 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
Laguna XS 2.1
$5.40 per month$0.18 per day
Laguna XS 2.1 saves $0.45 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