Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) vs Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) by SpaceXAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)
Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback): 17.5% less intelligence, 3.2% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 4.0% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) | Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 53.6 | 44.2 | −17.5% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 17.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,172.43 | $2,241.91 | +3.2% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 3.2% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 33.81s | 32.45s | −4.0% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 4.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
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 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback)Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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