Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Grok 4.6 (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) by Anthropic or Grok 4.6 (Medium) by SpaceXAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Grok 4.6 (Medium)
Grok 4.6 (Medium) vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max): 2.4% more intelligence, 77.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 12.9% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Grok 4.6 (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.8 | 42.8 | +2.4% Grok 4.6 (Medium) is 2.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $1,557.04 | −77.3% Grok 4.6 (Medium) is 77.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 37.99s | 33.09s | −12.9% Grok 4.6 (Medium) is 12.9% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Grok 4.6 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Grok 4.6 (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/grok-4-6-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/grok-4-6-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill