Why should a builder use Granite 4.2 8B on OpenRouter?

It offers cheap long-context reasoning with no provider account required, and cached-input pricing reduces cost for agent loops that replay the same context.

IBM Granite 4.2 8B Now on OpenRouter at $0.10 per Million Tokens

Q: What is IBM Granite 4.2 8B?

Granite 4.2 8B is a dense reasoning model from IBM for mathematics, code generation, multilingual dialogue, and agentic workflows needing multi-step reasoning.

Q: How much does Granite 4.2 8B cost on OpenRouter?

It costs $0.10 per million prompt tokens and $0.15 per million completion tokens, with cached-input reads at $0.05 per million, and supports a 128K context window.

What shipped

IBM's Granite 4.2 8B — a dense reasoning model — went live on OpenRouter as ibm-granite/granite-4.2-8b.

What changed

The model is a full reasoning model aimed at multi-step work: mathematics, code generation, multilingual dialogue, and agentic tool-use flows. It carries a 128K context window and is priced at $0.10 per million prompt tokens and $0.15 per million completion tokens, with cached-input reads at $0.05 per million. It joins OpenRouter's catalog as a text-only model alongside the rest of the Granite line, usable through the standard API with no provider account required.

Why a builder cares

At 8B parameters with 128K context and sub-$0.20-per-million pricing, this is a cheap reasoning option for agent scaffolds and code tasks that need long context without flagship-model cost. Cached-input pricing makes repeated tool-call loops — the same system prompt and context replayed every turn — meaningfully cheaper.

What shipped

What changed

Why a builder cares

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