Compare/Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) vs Grok 3

Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)vsGrok 3

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Anthropic

Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Input
$5/M
Output
$25/M
Speed
48 tok/s
TTFT
9.55s
xAI

Grok 3

Input
$3/M
Output
$15/M
Speed
69 tok/s
TTFT
0.36s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Grok 3
Faster (tok/s)
Grok 3
Lower Latency
Grok 3
Benchmarks (7-5)
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Pricing Comparison

MetricClaude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)Grok 3
Input ($/M tokens)$5$3
Output ($/M tokens)$25$15
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)$7.50
Grok 3$4.50

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
48 tok/s
Grok 3
69 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
9.55s
Grok 3
0.36s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
53.025.2
Coding Index
48.119.8
Math Index
58.0
GPQA Diamond
89.6%69.3%
MMLU-Pro
79.9%
LiveCodeBench
42.5%
AIME 2025
58.0%
MATH-500
87.0%
Humanity's Last Exam
36.7%5.1%
SciCode
51.9%36.8%
IFBench
53.1%46.9%
TerminalBench
46.2%11.4%
Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)7 wins
5 winsGrok 3

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) or Grok 3?

Grok 3 is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $6.00/M tokens vs $10.00/M for Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort).

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) wins 7 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 5 for Grok 3. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

Grok 3 generates tokens faster at 69 tok/s vs 48 tok/s. However, Grok 3 has lower time-to-first-token (0.36s vs 9.55s).

When should I use Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) vs Grok 3?

Choose based on your priorities: Grok 3 for lower cost, Claude Opus 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) for stronger benchmark performance, and Grok 3 for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.