Claude Opus 5 vs Grok 4.20
Full profiles: Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) and Grok 4.20 (SpaceXAI): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 13 sources
As of 6 Nov 2026, Claude Opus 5 is ahead of Grok 4.20 on quality (65.4 vs 58.4 on the BenchLeader Index), but Grok 4.20 is 6.4× cheaper at $1.56 vs $10.00 per 1M tokens blended. Claude Opus 5 leads in every category we measure both in. Grok 4.20 streams ~2× faster.
Key facts (as of 6 Nov 2026)
- Claude Opus 5 scores 65.4 on the BenchLeader Index and Grok 4.20 scores 58.4 (BenchLeader, 6 Nov 2026).
- Claude Opus 5 costs $10.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 6 Nov 2026).
- Grok 4.20 costs $1.56 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 6 Nov 2026).
- Grok 4.20 streams ~2× faster than Claude Opus 5 (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 6 Nov 2026).
- Of the 24 benchmarks both models have, Claude Opus 5 leads 24 (BenchLeader, 6 Nov 2026).
- On Arena WebDev, Claude Opus 5 is rated 1691 and Grok 4.20 1376 (LMArena, as published by 6 Nov 2026).
Claude Opus 5 benchmarks 
Grok 4.20 benchmarks Which to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Claude Opus 5 | 68 vs 54 category score; Arena WebDev 1691 vs 1376 | High |
| Agents & tool use | Claude Opus 5 | 64 vs 51 category score | High |
| Maths | Claude Opus 5 | 70 vs 54 category score; FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 85.6% vs 44.9% | High |
| Reasoning | Claude Opus 5 | 67 vs 61 category score; GPQA Diamond 93.9% vs 89.3% | Medium |
| Knowledge | Claude Opus 5 | 67 vs 53 category score; SimpleQA Verified 59.9% vs 30.2% | High |
| Long documents | Claude Opus 5 | 65 vs 59 category score; AA-LCR v1.1 79.3% vs 69.0% | Medium |
| Images and other media | Claude Opus 5 | 67 vs 58 category score; MMMU-Pro 84.7% vs 74.6% | High |
| Chat quality (human preference) | Claude Opus 5 | 68 vs 66 on Arena votes | Medium |
| Lowest cost | Grok 4.20 | $1.56 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.085 vs $0.400 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Grok 4.20 | 19.9 s (Grok 4.20 (thinking)) vs 51.8 s (Claude Opus 5 (max)) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Claude Opus 5 (max) leads on quality: 65.4 vs 58.4.
- Claude Opus 5 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, human preference, knowledge, long context, maths, multimodal, reasoning.
- Grok 4.20 (thinking) is stronger in instruction following.
- Grok 4.20 (thinking) is 6.4× cheaper ($1.56 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- Grok 4.20 (thinking) streams 1.6× faster (102 vs 66 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Opus 5 | Grok 4.20 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | SpaceXAI |
| Released | 24 Jul 2026 | 17 Feb 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Compared at | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Grok 4.20 (thinking) |
| Open weights | No | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500 | $1.25 / $2.50 / $0.200 |
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Grok 4.20 (thinking) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 67.2 | 61.0 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Coding | 68.1 | 53.5 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Agents & tools | 64.1 | 50.5 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Maths | 70.3 | 53.9 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Knowledge | 66.7 | 53.0 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Instruction following | – | 78.6 | not comparable |
| Human preference | 68.3 | 66.0 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Multimodal | 67.3 | 58.3 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Long context | 64.5 | 59.1 | Claude Opus 5 |
On one chart
Each domain on the index's own scale, where 50 is an average model. Click a domain to see the benchmarks behind it. Pick up to 5 models from the list.
Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Instruction following.
ModelIndex
Where sources disagree
Across the 24 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 5 leads 24, Grok 4.20 leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 5 ahead.
| Overall index | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Grok 4.20 (thinking) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 65.4 | 58.4 | Claude Opus 5 |
| Arena Text | 1491 | 1472 | Claude Opus 5 |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page. Cost, tokens and time per benchmark task are measured: Artificial Analysis’ averages over its whole Intelligence Index run.
| Measure | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Grok 4.20 (thinking) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $10.00 | $1.56 |
| Input / output per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 | $1.25 / $2.50 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.500 | $0.200 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0095 | $0.0013 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.075 | $0.017 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.068 | $0.011 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.400 | $0.085 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.015 | $0.0030 |
| Agentic coding session, input mostly cached | $0.198 | $0.038 |
| Cost per benchmark task (AA Index) | $11.82 | – |
| Output tokens per task (AA Index) | 118k | – |
| Of which reasoning | 73k | – |
| Time per task (AA Index) | 30 min | – |
| Output speed | 66 tok/s | 102 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 51.8 s | 19.9 s |
| Time to a complete answer | 302.5 s | 50.3 s |
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 5 (max) scores 65.4 and takes 52 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 5 scores 65.2 in 3 s, Claude Opus 5 (high) scores 64.3 in 19 s. Grok 4.20 (thinking) scores 58.4 and takes 20 s to its first answer token. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
138 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Grok 4.20 (thinking) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 65.4 | 58.4 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | 64.1 | 50.5 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 68.1 | 53.5 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | 68.3 | 66.0 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 66.7 | 53.0 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 64.5 | 59.1 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 70.3 | 53.9 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | 67.3 | 58.3 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 67.2 | 61.0 |
| Instruction following score | BenchLeader | – | 78.6 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $10.00 | $1.56 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 66 tok/s | 102 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 51.8 s | 19.9 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 2,000,000 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 93.9% | 89.3% |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 80.6%† | – |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1515 | 1489 |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 91.2% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 93.2% | 91.1% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 54.9% | 34.5% |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 44.8% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 93.4%† | 88.6% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | Kagi LLM Benchmark | – | 75.0% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 97.5% | 89.5% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 90.4% | 65.1% |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 30.2%† | 0.1% |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 29.1% | 6.6% |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 50.0% | – |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | 37.4%† | – |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 43.0% | 29.0% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 59.0% | – |
| CL-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 22.2%† |
| CL-bench Life | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 11.9%† |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 63.3% | 38.7%† |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 97.6% | 90.1%† |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 66.5% | 64.5% |
| BTF-3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 12.0%† | – |
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | 56.4% | – |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 91.8% | 52.3%† |
Show all 138 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 5 (max) | Grok 4.20 (thinking) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 53.4% | – |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1528 | 1511 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1691 | 1376 |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 81.5% | – |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 89.0%† | 84.3% |
| IOI | Vals AI | 84.3%† | – |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 97.0%† | 72.2% |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | 57.5%† | 0.3% |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | 3.0%† | – |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | 28.5%† | – |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 88.4%† | 4.1% |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | 63.2%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | 62.2%† | – |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 73.7% | – |
| CursorBench | Cursor | 46.6% | – |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 2164.6† | 1150.3† |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 52.0% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 49.0% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 89.1% | – |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | 82.3%† | – |
| GameBench 2 Overall | DuelLab GameBench 2 | 76.6† | – |
| GameBench 2 by reasoning setting | DuelLab GameBench 2 | 84.7† | – |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 31.1% | – |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 51.8% | 57.3%† |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | OSWorld | 31.4% | – |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 65.8% | – |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | 7.7 | – |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 65.2% | – |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | Artificial Analysis | – | 37.9% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 93.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | 84.6%† | 44.2% |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 85.8%† | – |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 57.0%† | 20.0%† |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 48.7% | – |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 42.1% | – |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 53.8% | – |
| APEX-Agents (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 14.2% |
| CUA-bench | Vals AI | 9.0% | – |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | 65.4%† | – |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | 58.6%† | 28.5% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | 6.7%† | 0.0% |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 55.3%† | 13.9% |
| SkillsBench | Vals AI | 60.4%† | – |
| SREBench | Vals AI | 12.2%† | – |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 45.5%† | 7.0% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 40.5% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 53.5%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | 27.1%† | – |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | 18.8%† | – |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | 1214† | – |
| BALROG | BALROG | 63.4% | – |
| PostTrainBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 35.0%† | – |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 79.6%† | – |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 11181.9† | 4662.9† |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 56.6% | – |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 21.6% | – |
| EnterpriseOps-Gym | Artificial Analysis | 47.5% | – |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1655 | – |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 28.6% | – |
| DeepSec-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 25.9% | – |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 85.6% | 44.9% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 73.2% | 17.1% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 98.9% | 92.2% |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 99.0% | 14.0% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 95.7% | – |
| AIME (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 96.5% |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1515 | 1465 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 59.9% | 30.2% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 74.5% | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 37.6 | – |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 91.6%† | 86.3% |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 87.0%† | 77.7% |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 73.2%† | 63.7% |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 75.1%† | 74.1% |
| MedQA | Vals AI | – | 94.5% |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | 79.3%† | – |
| CaseLaw v2 | Vals AI | – | 54.5% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | 73.6%† | 11.7% |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 63.6%† | 32.2% |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 91.0%† | 63.4% |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 76.9%† | – |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | 53.7% | – |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 45.7% | – |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 24.0% | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 60.9% | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 40.6% | – |
| Global-MMLU-Lite (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 89.5% |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 88.7% | – |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 63.8% | – |
| IFBench | Artificial Analysis | – | 81.2% |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1495 | 1447 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1491 | 1472 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | 1365† | – |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1474 | 1445 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1486 | 1479 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1502 | 1466 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1320† | 1262 |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 84.7% | 74.6% |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 89.9%† | 83.5% |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 72.1%† | 45.4% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 30.4%† | 0.0%† |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 79.3% | 69.0% |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1490† | 1439 |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | 11.1% | – |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 164.4† | 152.3† |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 80.1% | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | 44.2 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 50.8 | 25.7 |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | 333.7 | 281.9 |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | 33.0% | – |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | 47.9%† | – |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | 73.9%† | 39.1% |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 16.8%† | – |
Data as of 2026-11-06. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
DuelLab GameBench 2, release gb2-20261103-09b2218cbd85 (https://benchmarks.duellab.org/releases/gb2-20261103-09b2218cbd85/), CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Scores mapped to BenchLeader model names; not endorsed by DuelLab.
What changed
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 7 new results (AA Intelligence Index v5.0, HLE-Diamond (AA), AA-Omniscience v1.1…).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 new result (MirrorCode).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 score revision.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): BenchLeader Index 66.3 → 65.5.
- Grok 4.20 (thinking): BenchLeader Index 58.9 → 58.4.
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 new result (AA Progress Index v1).
- Grok 4.20 (thinking): 1 new result (AA Progress Index v1).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): BenchLeader Index 66.8 → 66.3.
- Grok 4.20 (thinking): 1 new result (Global-MMLU-Lite (AA)).
- Claude Opus 5 (max): 1 new result (Vals RSI Index).
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Claude Opus 5 vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Claude Opus 5 vs GPT-6 Astra
- Grok 4.20 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Grok 4.20 vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Grok 4.20 vs GPT-6 Astra
- Grok 4.20 vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- Claude Fable 5 vs Grok 4.20
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for coding · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Opus 5 vs Grok 4.20: questions
- Is Claude Opus 5 better than Grok 4.20?
- Claude Opus 5 (max) leads on quality: 65.4 vs 58.4. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 5 (max) is ahead overall as of 6 Nov 2026, but check the category scores for your use.
- Claude Opus 5 vs Grok 4.20: which is cheaper, and will that change?
- Grok 4.20 is cheaper today: $1.56 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
- Is Claude Opus 5 or Grok 4.20 better for coding?
- Claude Opus 5 scores higher in coding (68 vs 54 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena WebDev, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 1691 for Claude Opus 5 against 1376 for Grok 4.20.
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 5 or Grok 4.20?
- Grok 4.20 streams ~2× faster (102 vs 66 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
- Is Claude Opus 5 or Grok 4.20 better for agents and tool use?
- Claude Opus 5 scores higher in agentic tasks (64 vs 51 on the category index, where 50 is average).
More questions (4)
- Which is better for long documents?
- Claude Opus 5 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (65 vs 59). Grok 4.20 accepts more context: 2,000,000 against 1,000,000 tokens for Claude Opus 5.
- Which has lower latency?
- Grok 4.20 answers first: 19.9 s against 51.8 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Opus 5 vs Grok 4.20?
- Across the 24 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 5 leads 24, Grok 4.20 leads 0. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 5 ahead.
- When was Claude Opus 5 released?
- Claude Opus 5 was released on 24 Jul 2026.