Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Grok 4.5 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Grok 4.5 (High) by SpaceXAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Grok 4.5 (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 4.9% less intelligence, 99.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 221.7% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Grok 4.5 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 38.8 | −4.9% Grok 4.5 (High) is 4.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $1,243.85 | +99.9% Grok 4.5 (High) is 99.9% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 5.98s | 19.24s | +221.7% Grok 4.5 (High) is 221.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Grok 4.5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Grok 4.5 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/grok-4-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-medium/grok-4-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill