Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) by SpaceXAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) scores 19.9 points higher (44.2 vs 24.3) but costs 3.4× as much to run the benchmark ($2242 vs $653; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) when you need intelligence above 24.3, and Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) when 24.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 44.2 | +81.9% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 81.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $2,241.91 | +243.5% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 3.4× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.14s | 40.33s | +341.2% Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is 341.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 81.9% more intelligence, 243.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 341.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Grok 4.6 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Grok 4.6 (Xhigh)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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