Claude Opus 4.6 vs Grok 4.20
For professional, safety-sensitive, and multi-step agent workflows, Claude Opus 4.6 is the practical pick: it wins on safety calibration, agentic planning, and creative problem solving and scores 78.7% on SWE‑bench Verified (Epoch AI). Grok 4.20 wins on structured output, constrained rewriting, and classification while being far cheaper—trade quality for cost if strict schema handling or budget is the priority.
anthropic
Claude Opus 4.6
Benchmark Scores
External Benchmarks
Pricing
Input
$5.00/MTok
Output
$25.00/MTok
modelpicker.net
xai
Grok 4.20
Benchmark Scores
External Benchmarks
Pricing
Input
$2.00/MTok
Output
$6.00/MTok
modelpicker.net
Benchmark Analysis
All scores below are from our 12-test suite (1–5 scale) and the provided rankings. Ties (both models same score): strategic_analysis (5/5, tied for 1st), tool_calling (5/5, tied for 1st), faithfulness (5/5, tied for 1st), long_context (5/5, tied for 1st), persona_consistency (5/5, tied for 1st), multilingual (5/5, tied for 1st). Claude Opus 4.6 wins: creative_problem_solving 5 vs 4 (Claude ranks tied 1st; Grok ranks 9th), agentic_planning 5 vs 4 (Claude tied 1st; Grok rank 16 of 54), and safety_calibration 5 vs 1 (Claude tied for 1st; Grok rank 32 of 55). Grok 4.20 wins: structured_output 5 vs 4 (Grok tied for 1st; Claude rank 26 of 54), constrained_rewriting 4 vs 3 (Grok rank 6; Claude rank 31), and classification 4 vs 3 (Grok tied for 1st; Claude rank 31). External supplement: Claude Opus 4.6 scores 78.7% on SWE-bench Verified (Epoch AI), where it ranks 1st of 12; it also scores 94.4 on AIME 2025 in our data (rank 4 of 23). Practical meaning: choose Claude when you need robust refusal/permitting behavior, multi-step planning and top-tier coding/competition math signals (SWE-bench 78.7); choose Grok when strict JSON/schema fidelity, constrained character compression, and classification routing are the primary tasks and budget is a constraint.
Pricing Analysis
Per the payload, Claude Opus 4.6 charges $5 per mTok input and $25 per mTok output; Grok 4.20 charges $2 input and $6 output. That makes Claude ~4.17x more expensive on output (priceRatio 4.1667). Raw costs (output-only): Claude = $25,000 for 1M tokens, $250,000 for 10M, $2,500,000 for 100M. Grok = $6,000 for 1M, $60,000 for 10M, $600,000 for 100M. If you split tokens 50/50 input/output: Claude totals $15,000 (1M), $150,000 (10M), $1,500,000 (100M); Grok totals $4,000 (1M), $40,000 (10M), $400,000 (100M). Who should care: startups and high-throughput services will feel the gap immediately—at 10M tokens/month Claude costs roughly $110k more than Grok in the balanced example. Teams that need top safety/agentic performance may justify Claude’s premium; cost-sensitive applications that rely on heavy structured outputs or classification should favor Grok.
Real-World Cost Comparison
Bottom Line
Choose Claude Opus 4.6 if you need: safety-calibrated responses, reliable multi-step agentic planning, high creative problem solving, or best-in-class coding signals (SWE-bench 78.7). Choose Grok 4.20 if you need: the lowest cost ($2/$6 per mTok), best structured-output/JSON adherence, stronger constrained rewriting and classification, or high-throughput, budget-sensitive deployments.
How We Test
We test every model against our 12-benchmark suite covering tool calling, agentic planning, creative problem solving, safety calibration, and more. Each test is scored 1–5 by an LLM judge. Read our full methodology.