💰 Unit Cost Winner Claude 4.5 Sonnet $3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out
⚡ Latency & Speed Winner Claude 4.5 Sonnet 380ms TTFT · 84 tok/s
💻 Coding (SWE) Winner Claude 4.5 Sonnet 75.8% SWE-bench · 96% HumanEval
🧠 STEM Reasoning Winner Grok 3 84.6% GPQA · 89.8% MATH-500

Which model is better: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or Grok 3?

Claude 4.5 Sonnet and Grok 3 share identical input pricing at $3.00 per 1M tokens ($15.00 vs. $15.00 output). In terms of operational performance, Claude 4.5 Sonnet delivers lower response latency at 380ms TTFT (240ms faster than Grok 3) with 84 vs. 88 tok/s throughput. Claude 4.5 Sonnet leads coding evaluations at 75.8% SWE-bench Verified vs. 65.8% for Grok 3 and 84.2% vs. 84.6% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.

Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)

Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.

Metric / Dimension Claude 4.5 Sonnet Grok 3 Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $3.00 $3.00 Identical Pricing
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $15.00 $15.00 Identical Output Pricing
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $0.300 $0.750 Claude 4.5 Sonnet is 2.5x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $3.75 $3.00 Grok 3 is 1.3x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output) 205k (64k out) 134k (16k out) Claude 4.5 Sonnet (1.5x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency 380ms 620ms Claude 4.5 Sonnet (240ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput) 84 tok/s 88 tok/s Grok 3 (+4 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 75.8% 65.8% Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+10.0% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM) 84.2% 84.6% Grok 3 (+0.4% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline) 90.4% 80% Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+10.4% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic) 97.5% 89.8% Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+7.7% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 56.5 / 100 52.7 / 100 Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+3.8 pts)

Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster

Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.

25.0M Tokens
500K 50M 250M 500M+
5.0M Tokens
100K 25M 75M 150M+
50% Cached
0% (Uncached) 25% 50% (Typical Agent) 95% Max

Estimated Monthly Spend

Claude 4.5 Sonnet $116.25

$3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.300/1M read · $3.75/1M write

Grok 3 $121.88

$3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.750/1M read · $3.00/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$5.63 / mo
(4.6% lower cost with Claude 4.5 Sonnet)
Open Full Matchup Analysis →
A

When to Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet

Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) for end-to-end autonomous coding agents, complex multi-file debugging, browser/GUI automation, and high-precision technical writing — offering a 204k context window, 380ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M cached reads).

B

When to Choose Grok 3

Choose Grok 3 (xAI) for massive compute foundation model specialized in PhD-level science reasoning, real-time data analysis, and enterprise logic — offering a 134k context window, 620ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.750/1M cached reads).

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or Grok 3?

Both Claude 4.5 Sonnet and Grok 3 share identical input pricing at $3.00/1M tokens.

Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or Grok 3?

Claude 4.5 Sonnet delivers faster first-token latency at 380ms TTFT (84 tok/s throughput) compared to 620ms TTFT (88 tok/s) for Grok 3.

How do Claude 4.5 Sonnet and Grok 3 compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?

On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 4.5 Sonnet scores 75.8% versus 65.8% for Grok 3. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 4.5 Sonnet scores 84.2% versus 84.6% for Grok 3 (and 97.5% vs 89.8% on MATH-500).

When should you choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet?

Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) for end-to-end autonomous coding agents, complex multi-file debugging, browser/GUI automation, and high-precision technical writing — offering a 204k context window, 380ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M cached reads).

When should you choose Grok 3?

Choose Grok 3 (xAI) for massive compute foundation model specialized in PhD-level science reasoning, real-time data analysis, and enterprise logic — offering a 134k context window, 620ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.750/1M cached reads).

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