Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoning) 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 Sonnet 5 (Medium) scores 14.1 points higher (28.1 vs 14.0) but costs 4.9× as much to run the benchmark ($1218 vs $250; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) when you need intelligence above 14.0, and Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoning) when 14.0 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 14.0 | −50.2% Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoni… is 50.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $250.37 | −79.4% Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoni… is 79.4% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.27s | 5.89s | −36.5% Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoni… is 36.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $1.25 / $2.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 50.2% less intelligence, 79.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 36.5% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)Grok 4.3 (Non-reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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