IBM Releases Granite 4.1 8B with 131K Context Window at $0.05/M Input Tokens

IBM has released Granite 4.1 8B, an 8-billion-parameter decoder-only language model with a 131,072-token context window, priced at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens.

Model Specifications

Granite 4.1 8B is a dense transformer model with 8 billion parameters, released on April 30, 2026. The model supports a context window of 131,072 tokens, positioning it in the long-context model category alongside competitors like Claude and GPT-4.

The model is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, making it available for both commercial and research use without licensing restrictions.

Capabilities

Granite 4.1 8B targets enterprise use cases with several specific features:

• Tool calling: Implements OpenAI-compatible function calling for integration with external systems
• Code generation: Includes fill-in-the-middle support for code completion tasks
• RAG support: Designed for retrieval-augmented generation workflows
• Text processing: Handles summarization, classification, and extraction tasks

The model supports 12 languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Czech, Italian, Korean, Dutch, and Chinese.

Deployment

IBM is distributing Granite 4.1 8B through OpenRouter, which provides routing to multiple infrastructure providers. Model weights are publicly available for self-hosting.

The pricing structure of $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens places it in the mid-range pricing tier for models of this size, comparable to other 8B-parameter models from companies like Meta and Mistral.

What This Means

Granite 4.1 8B represents IBM's continued investment in open-source enterprise AI, offering a permissively licensed alternative to proprietary models. The 131K context window is notably large for an 8B-parameter model, though actual performance at that context length remains to be independently verified. The Apache 2.0 license and multi-language support make it a viable option for enterprises requiring on-premises deployment or specific regulatory compliance, particularly in the 12 supported language markets.