Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Grok 4.6 (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Grok 4.6 (Low) by SpaceXAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 18.5 points higher (53.6 vs 35.1) but costs 3.5× as much to run the benchmark ($2172 vs $614; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 35.1, and Grok 4.6 (Low) when 35.1 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Grok 4.6 (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 35.1 | −34.5% Grok 4.6 (Low) is 34.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $613.92 | −71.7% Grok 4.6 (Low) is 71.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 13.36s | −60.5% Grok 4.6 (Low) is 60.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.6 (Low) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 34.5% less intelligence, 71.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 60.5% 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 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Grok 4.6 (Low)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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