Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Grok 4.6 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Grok 4.6 (High) by SpaceXAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Grok 4.6 (High) scores 3.5 points higher (44.3 vs 40.8) but costs 3.2× as much to run the benchmark ($1963 vs $622; both premium class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Grok 4.6 (High) when you need intelligence above 40.8, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when 40.8 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Grok 4.6 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 44.3 | +8.6% Grok 4.6 (High) is 8.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $1,962.90 | +215.4% Grok 4.6 (High) is 3.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 6.20s | 34.90s | +462.9% Grok 4.6 (High) is 462.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.6 (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 8.6% more intelligence, 215.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 462.9% slower end-to-end.
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 4.6 (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 4.6 (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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