Claude Opus 5 (Max) vs Grok 4.6 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Max) by Anthropic or Grok 4.6 (High) 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 (Max) scores 6.5 points higher (50.8 vs 44.3) but costs 3.7× as much to run the benchmark ($7275 vs $1963; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (Max) when you need intelligence above 44.3, and Grok 4.6 (High) when 44.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Max) | Grok 4.6 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 50.8 | 44.3 | −12.8% Grok 4.6 (High) is 12.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $7,274.74 | $1,962.90 | −73.0% Grok 4.6 (High) is 73.0% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 50.36s | 31.72s | −37.0% Grok 4.6 (High) is 37.0% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.6 (High) vs Claude Opus 5 (Max): 12.8% less intelligence, 73.0% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 37.0% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Grok 4.6 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Opus 5 (Max)Grok 4.6 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5/grok-4-6 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5/grok-4-6?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill