Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) vs Grok 4.5 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) 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 Grok 4.5 (High)
Grok 4.5 (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh): 12.8% more intelligence, 61.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 27.7% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Xhigh) | Grok 4.5 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.4 | 38.8 | +12.8% Grok 4.5 (High) is 12.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $3,255.40 | $1,243.85 | −61.8% Grok 4.5 (High) is 61.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 26.92s | 19.45s | −27.7% Grok 4.5 (High) is 27.7% faster |
| 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 (Xhigh) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
- 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 (Xhigh)Grok 4.5 (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-sonnet-5-xhigh/grok-4-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-xhigh/grok-4-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill