R1 0528 vs Grok Code Fast 1

Head-to-head across our 12-test suite: R1 0528 wins nine categories (strategic analysis 4 vs 3, constrained rewriting 4 vs 3, creative problem solving 4 vs 3, tool calling 5 vs 4, faithfulness 5 vs 4, long context 5 vs 4, safety calibration 4 vs 2, persona consistency 5 vs 4, multilingual 5 vs 4). Grok Code Fast 1 wins none. The remaining three tests tie: structured output 4/4, classification 4/4, agentic planning 5/5. Context and rankings: R1 is tied for 1st in persona consistency, faithfulness, long context, tool calling and agentic planning across the set (e.g., tool calling: "tied for 1st with 16 other models out of 54 tested"), meaning it reliably selects and sequences functions and handles very long contexts (163,840 vs Grok's 256,000 window). R1 also posts strong external-style math results in our data: MATH Level 5 96.6% and AIME 2025 66.4% (these external-format tests are commonly reported by Epoch AI). Grok holds parity with R1 on classification and agentic planning (ties), but scores lower on safety calibration (2 vs R1's 4) and faithfulness (4 vs R1's 5), which matters for applications that must refuse or accurately filter unsafe requests. Note R1 has operational quirks: it can return empty responses on structured output and constrained rewriting and uses reasoning tokens that consume output budget on short tasks — a practical caveat when you rely on strict JSON outputs or short replies. Grok is positioned as a faster, more economical reasoning model (and exposes reasoning traces), which explains its competitive standing on agentic workflows despite lower safety and faithfulness scores.

Prices (per 1k tokens): R1 0528 input $0.50, output $2.15; Grok Code Fast 1 input $0.20, output $1.50. Assuming a 50/50 input/output split across total tokens: • 1M total tokens (500k input + 500k output = 1,000 mTok): R1 ≈ $1,325; Grok ≈ $850. • 10M tokens: R1 ≈ $13,250; Grok ≈ $8,500. • 100M tokens: R1 ≈ $132,500; Grok ≈ $85,000. That gap grows for output-heavy workloads because R1's output rate is $2.15 vs Grok's $1.50. At these volumes companies running high-throughput chatbots, code-generation services, or long-response applications will see six-figure differences; small teams or prototypes will feel the difference but may prioritize R1's quality for critical use cases.

Choose R1 0528 if you need the highest reliability on safety, faithfulness, tool calling and very long-context reasoning (top scores and top tied ranks across many benchmarks) and you can absorb higher per-token cost — especially for apps where mistakes are costly (legal drafting, code deployment pipelines, moderated customer support). Choose Grok Code Fast 1 if you prioritize lower inference cost, a larger context window (256k), simpler migration for high-throughput coding/agentic workflows, or if you can tolerate lower safety calibration and faithfulness to save roughly $475 per 1M tokens under a 50/50 split (R1 ≈ $1,325 vs Grok ≈ $850).