Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) vs Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, 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 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) scores 1.9 points higher (44.2 vs 42.3) but costs 2.6× as much to run the benchmark ($2242 vs $860; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) | Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.3 | 44.2 | +4.5% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 4.5% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $860.33 | $2,241.91 | +160.6% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 2.6× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 13.96s | 39.83s | +185.3% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 185.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback): 4.5% more intelligence, 160.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 185.3% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Low, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
- 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 (Low, Default Fallback)Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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