Claude Sonnet 5 vs Grok 4.6
Claude Sonnet 5 
Grok 4.6 Verdict
- Grok 4.6 (medium) leads on quality: 63.9 vs 61.4.
- Claude Sonnet 5 (high) is stronger in agents & tools, human preference, multimodal, reasoning.
- Grok 4.6 (medium) is stronger in coding, composite, knowledge, long context.
- Grok 4.6 (medium) is 1.3× cheaper ($3.00 vs $4.00 per 1M blended).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | Grok 4.6 (medium) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 61.4 | 63.9 |
| Agents & tools score | 61.8 | – |
| Coding score | 61.6 | 64.1 |
| Composite score | 69.5 | 83.4 |
| Human preference score | 66.2 | – |
| Knowledge score | 62.4 | 77.5 |
| Long context score | 64.8 | 67.1 |
| Multimodal score | 63.1 | – |
| Reasoning score | 66.8 | 62.1 |
| Blended price $/M | $4.00 | $3.00 |
| Output speed | 60 tok/s | 53 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 10.0 s | 33.4 s |
| Context window | 1M | 500k |
| SciCode | 48.6% | 54.6% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | – |
| LMArena Text | 1462 | – |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1490 | – |
| LMArena Coding | 1521 | – |
| LMArena WebDev | 1538 | – |
| LMArena Vision | 1278 | – |
| LMArena Agent | 6.3 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 32.0 | 43.0 |
| AA-LCR | 76.7% | 81.0% |
| AA-Omniscience | -3.7 | 28 |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | – | 93.5% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 35.7% | 42.1% |
| SciCode (AA) | 54.3% | 55.9% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | – | 87.5% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | – | 61.3% |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Claude Sonnet 5 vs Grok 4.6: questions
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Grok 4.6?
- Grok 4.6 (medium) leads on quality: 63.9 vs 61.4. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Grok 4.6 (medium) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than Grok 4.6 for coding?
- Grok 4.6 scores higher in coding (64 vs 62 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or Grok 4.6?
- Grok 4.6 is cheaper: $3.00 against $4.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Claude Sonnet 5 or Grok 4.6?
- Claude Sonnet 5 streams faster: 60 against 53 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M against 500k tokens.