Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Grok 4.6 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Grok 4.6 (High) by SpaceXAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 9.3 points higher (53.6 vs 44.3) but costs 1.1× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $1963; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Grok 4.6 (High).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Grok 4.6 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 44.3 | −17.4% Grok 4.6 (High) is 17.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $1,962.90 | −9.6% Grok 4.6 (High) is 9.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 36.61s | 35.57s | −2.8% Grok 4.6 (High) is 2.8% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.6 (High) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 17.4% less intelligence, 9.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 2.8% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Grok 4.6 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Grok 4.6 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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