Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Grok 4.3 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Grok 4.3 (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 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 26.3 points higher (51.2 vs 24.9) but costs 4.5× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $363; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 24.9, and Grok 4.3 (High) when 24.9 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Grok 4.3 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 24.9 | −51.4% Grok 4.3 (High) is 51.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $363.24 | −77.7% Grok 4.3 (High) is 77.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.83s | 28.87s | +32.2% Grok 4.3 (High) is 32.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $1.25 / $2.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.3 (High) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 51.4% less intelligence, 77.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 32.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Grok 4.3 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Grok 4.3 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/grok-4-3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-5-medium/grok-4-3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill