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

Grok 3vsClaude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

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

xAI

Grok 3

Input
$4/M
Output
$20/M
Speed
TTFT
Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Input
$3.75/M
Output
$15/M
Speed
67 tok/s
TTFT
54.21s

Winner by Category

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

Pricing Comparison

MetricGrok 3Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
Input ($/M tokens)$4$3.75
Output ($/M tokens)$20$15
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Grok 3$6.00
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)$5.25

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Grok 3
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
67 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Grok 3
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)
54.21s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
25.251.7
Coding Index
19.850.9
Math Index
58.0
GPQA Diamond
69.3%87.5%
MMLU-Pro
79.9%
LiveCodeBench
42.5%
AIME 2025
58.0%
MATH-500
87.0%
Humanity's Last Exam
5.1%30.0%
SciCode
36.8%46.8%
IFBench
46.9%56.6%
TerminalBench
11.4%53.0%
Grok 35 wins
7 winsClaude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $6.56/M tokens vs $8.00/M for Grok 3.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

Claude Sonnet 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?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) generates tokens faster at 67 tok/s vs 0 tok/s. Grok 3 also has lower time-to-first-token (0.00s vs 54.21s).

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

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