Claude Opus 4.6 vs Grok 3 Mini

Head-to-head on our 12-test suite (scores from the payload): Claude Opus 4.6 wins strategic_analysis (5 vs 3) and is tied for 1st out of 54 models ("tied for 1st with 25 other models out of 54 tested"). That matters for nuanced tradeoff reasoning in finance, design, or policy work. Opus also wins creative_problem_solving (5 vs 3) and agentic_planning (5 vs 3); agentic_planning is ranked "tied for 1st with 14 other models out of 54 tested," indicating stronger goal decomposition and failure recovery. Safety_calibration is a clear Opus win (5 vs 2); Opus ranks "tied for 1st with 4 other models out of 55 tested," which matters when you need reliable refusal/allow behavior. Multilingual (5 vs 4) and faithfulness (5 vs 5 tie) show Opus’s advantage on global, source-faithful output. On external benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.6 scores 78.7% on SWE-bench Verified (Epoch AI) and 94.4% on AIME 2025 (both values in the payload) — on SWE-bench Opus is ranked 1 of 12 (sole holder), which supports its strength in coding and rigorous problem solving. Grok 3 Mini wins constrained_rewriting (4 vs 3) and classification (4 vs 3); constrained_rewriting is ranked 6 of 53 for Grok ("rank 6 of 53 (25 models share this score)"), showing it is stronger at tight compression and precise format-preserving edits. Several categories tie: structured_output (4/4), tool_calling (5/5), faithfulness (5/5), long_context (5/5), and persona_consistency (5/5) — both models handle JSON/schema adherence, function selection, retrieval at 30K+ tokens, and persona stability well. In short: Opus dominates high-level reasoning, agentic tasks, safety, and external coding/math benchmarks; Grok is the budget-friendly pick that beats Opus on constrained rewriting and classification.

Costs per 1,000 tokens (mtok) are: Claude Opus 4.6 input $5 / output $25; Grok 3 Mini input $0.3 / output $0.5. Using a 50/50 input/output split as a simple example: at 1M tokens/month Claude costs $15,000 (500 mtok input * $5 = $2,500; 500 mtok output * $25 = $12,500). Grok costs $400 (500 mtok * $0.3 = $150; 500 mtok * $0.5 = $250). At 10M tokens/month: Claude ≈ $150,000 vs Grok ≈ $4,000. At 100M tokens/month: Claude ≈ $1,500,000 vs Grok ≈ $40,000. The 50x priceRatio in the payload (priceRatio: 50) means heavy API consumers, startups, and any service with high token volumes should care — Grok 3 Mini can reduce operational cost by orders of magnitude, while Opus 4.6 is priced for high-assurance, high-capability workflows where the extra cost may be justified.

Choose Claude Opus 4.6 if you need top-tier strategic reasoning, agentic planning, safety calibration, or best-in-class coding/math performance (it wins 5 benchmarks including strategic_analysis, agentic_planning, creative_problem_solving, safety_calibration, multilingual). Choose Grok 3 Mini if cost is the primary constraint or your workloads prioritize constrained_rewriting, classification, or fast, logic-oriented responses — Grok wins those two tests and costs $0.3 input / $0.5 output per mtok versus Opus’s $5 / $25 per mtok.