Cost and performance comparison
Grok 4.5 vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Model AxAI
Grok 4.5
- Cost / 1M Tokens
- $3.20
- 70% in · 30% out mix
- Value Index (score÷cost)
- 28.1
- Higher = better value
- Speed
- 89/100
- Context
- 500K
- Tier
- Smart Tier
List price from the xAI pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.
Check the sourceModel BAnthropic
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
- Cost / 1M Tokens
- $6.60
- 70% in · 30% out mix
- ≈ $7.26 for the same text, tokenizer included
- Value Index (score÷cost)
- 12.3
- Higher = better value
- Speed
- 95/100
- Context
- 200K
- Tier
- Smart Tier
Last list price before the model was retired.
Its tokenizer produces about 10% more tokens than OpenAI's for the same text, so the real cost runs higher than the list price suggests. This is an estimate: the tokenizer has not been measured yet.
In-depth analysis
Grok 4.5 vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Detailed Comparison
Grok 4.5 is xAI's mid-range-tier language model with a 500K-token context window, excelling at reasoning. Claude 3.5 Sonnet from Anthropic is a mid-range-tier model supporting 200K tokens in context, with standout performance in creative tasks.
Grok 4.5 is both the cheaper and the stronger model here — for the same text it costs 56% less than Claude 3.5 Sonnet and still leads on combined coding and reasoning by 2 points. There is no tradeoff to weigh on this pair: unless you need something specific from Claude 3.5 Sonnet, the cheaper model is simply the better one. Grok 4.5 is priced at $2.00/M input tokens and $6.00/M output tokens. Claude 3.5 Sonnet costs $3.00/M input and $15.00/M output.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet turns the same text into about 10% more tokens than Grok 4.5, because their tokenizers differ — so comparing list prices per token understates what Claude 3.5 Sonnet costs. For the same text, split 70% input and 30% output and counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts it, Claude 3.5 Sonnet works out at about $7.26 per million tokens and Grok 4.5 at $3.20. Every cost figure on this page includes that difference.
On iOPTERA's editorial scores, Grok 4.5 leads with 89/100 for coding and 90/100 for reasoning, against Claude 3.5 Sonnet's 88/100 and 89/100.
Capability breakdown
Across the five core benchmark categories, here is how Grok 4.5 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet stack up head to head:
Best model by task
- coding: Grok 4.5 wins with 89/100
- reasoning: Grok 4.5 wins with 90/100
- data extraction: Claude 3.5 Sonnet wins with 90/100
- creative tasks: Claude 3.5 Sonnet wins with 91/100
- vision/multimodal: Claude 3.5 Sonnet wins with 88/100
Estimated monthly cost at scale
For 10M + 2M tokens of text a month (counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts), Grok 4.5 runs about $32.00 while Claude 3.5 Sonnet runs about $66.00 — Grok 4.5 saves roughly $34.00 (52%) every month.
What actually decides it
Grok 4.5 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet come from different labs, which means different tokenizers, different API shapes, and a second vendor relationship. The same English text does not produce the same token count on both, so a price-per-million comparison understates the difference — measure your own prompts on each before treating the headline rates as the full story.
Grok 4.5 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet are 25 months apart, which is more than one generation in this market. Benchmark comparisons across that gap flatter the older model: it was measured against the evaluations that existed at the time. Treat Claude 3.5 Sonnet's scores as a floor for what it does well and be sceptical of a close-looking result.
Grok 4.5 carries the larger context window at 500K tokens versus 200K for Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The gap is real but not decisive — it matters if your prompts routinely run long, and is irrelevant if they sit where most production prompts sit, well under 100K. Bear in mind that filling a large window is also what makes a request expensive.
Throughput is close enough to ignore — 95/100 versus 89/100. Neither model will feel noticeably quicker in an interactive product, so latency is not a reason to choose between them.
One practical asymmetry: Claude 3.5 Sonnet offers a batch API at 50% off standard rates, and Grok 4.5 does not. For anything that does not need an answer immediately — nightly enrichment, backfills, evaluation runs — that discount can be worth more than the difference in list price, and it is easy to overlook when comparing headline rates.
Grok 4.5 wins this comparison outright — cheaper and stronger. Choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet only if it has a specific capability you need; on price and benchmarks it is behind on both.
What you actually pay
The list price is only the start. Prompt caching, batch processing and long prompts change the bill, and each provider sets them differently. Prices per 1M tokens.
| Pricing term | Grok 4.5 | Claude 3.5 Sonnet |
|---|---|---|
| List price (input / output) | $2.00 / $6.00 | $3.00 / $15.00 |
| Cached input | $0.3015% of the input price | — |
| Batch API | Not on the price page | — |
| Long prompts | From 200K tokens: $4.00 / $12.00 | — |
| Input with 80% cache hits | $0.64 | — |
The last row assumes 80% of input tokens are read from the cache, as in a chat app that re-sends a long system prompt or RAG over the same documents. Cache-write and storage charges are not included.
Claude also bills cache writes: 1.25× the input price for a 5-minute cache, 2× for one hour.
Checked on October 8, 2026 against the pricing pages of xAI, Anthropic.
Capability scores
iOPTERA editorial scores across 5 categories — informed by public benchmarks, not measured by us
Coding
Reasoning
Extraction
Creative
Vision
Speed Score
Context Window
What Is a Token?
Models don't read words — they process tokens.
A token is roughly 4 characters of English text (~¾ of a word). Your API bill is priced per million tokens — understanding this directly reduces your costs.
Short phrase
"Hello, world!"
- Grok 4.5
- $0.80
- Claude 3.5 Sonnet
- $1.32
Business email
One typical email (~200 words)
- Grok 4.5
- $54.00
- Claude 3.5 Sonnet
- $89.10
Code file
50-line Python script
- Grok 4.5
- $80.00
- Claude 3.5 Sonnet
- $132.00
Prices shown are for 100,000 runs of each workload — one run costs a fraction of a cent on both Grok 4.5 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, so the number only becomes meaningful at production volume. Input tokens only; add your output volume in the calculator below.
How to check your token usage
response.usage.total_tokensEvery API response includes a usage object. Sum total_tokens across all calls to get your monthly figure, then use the calculator below.
Your Cost Calculator
Enter your actual monthly token usage to see real savings
Quick Presets
Grok 4.5
$96.00/mo
$1,152.00/yr
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
$217.80/mo
$2,613.60/yr
Annual Savings
$1,461.60 saved per year
Grok 4.5 cheaper · $121.80/mo
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