Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Grok 4.6 (Medium)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Grok 4.6 (Medium) 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 8.4 points higher (51.2 vs 42.8) but costs 1.0× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $1557; both premium class). Pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Grok 4.6 (Medium).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Grok 4.6 (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 42.8 | −16.4% Grok 4.6 (Medium) is 16.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $1,557.04 | −4.3% Grok 4.6 (Medium) is 4.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.83s | 33.09s | +51.6% Grok 4.6 (Medium) is 51.6% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.6 (Medium) vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 16.4% less intelligence, 4.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 51.6% 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 4.6 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Grok 4.6 (Medium)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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