Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) vs Grok 4.5 (High)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) 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 (Max): 1.6% more intelligence, 82.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 89.6% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Max) | Grok 4.5 (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 38.2 | 38.8 | +1.6% Grok 4.5 (High) is 1.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,998.25 | $1,243.85 | −82.2% Grok 4.5 (High) is 82.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 184.22s | 19.24s | −89.6% Grok 4.5 (High) is 89.6% 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 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- 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 (Max)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/grok-4-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5/grok-4-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill