💰 Unit Cost Winner Grok 3 Mini $0.30/1M in · $1.20/1M out
⚡ Latency & Speed Winner Grok 3 Mini 150ms TTFT · 160 tok/s
💻 Coding (SWE) Winner Claude 4 Opus 77.2% SWE-bench · 96.8% HumanEval
🧠 STEM Reasoning Winner Claude 4 Opus 87.1% GPQA · 98.1% MATH-500

Which model is better: Claude 4 Opus or Grok 3 Mini?

Grok 3 Mini is 98.0% cheaper for input tokens ($0.30 vs. $15.00 per 1M tokens) and $1.20 vs. $75.00 for output tokens (50.0x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Grok 3 Mini delivers lower response latency at 150ms TTFT (770ms faster than Claude 4 Opus) with 160 vs. 46 tok/s throughput. Claude 4 Opus leads coding evaluations at 77.2% SWE-bench Verified vs. 54.0% for Grok 3 Mini and 87.1% vs. 68.0% 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 Opus Grok 3 Mini Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $15.00 $0.30 Grok 3 Mini is 50.0x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $75.00 $1.20 Grok 3 Mini (98.4% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $1.500 $0.080 Grok 3 Mini is 18.8x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $18.75 $0.30 Grok 3 Mini is 62.5x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output) 205k (64k out) 131k (16k out) Claude 4 Opus (1.6x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency 920ms 150ms Grok 3 Mini (770ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput) 46 tok/s 160 tok/s Grok 3 Mini (+114 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 77.2% 54% Claude 4 Opus (+23.2% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM) 87.1% 68% Claude 4 Opus (+19.1% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline) 91.8% 80% Claude 4 Opus (+11.8% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic) 98.1% 87% Claude 4 Opus (+11.1% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 43.6 / 100 69.2 / 100 Grok 3 Mini (+25.6 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 Opus $581.25

$15.00/1M in · $75.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $1.500/1M read · $18.75/1M write

Grok 3 Mini $10.75

$0.30/1M in · $1.20/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.080/1M read · $0.30/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$570.50 / mo
(98.2% lower cost with Grok 3 Mini)
Open Full Matchup Analysis →
A

When to Choose Claude 4 Opus

Choose Claude 4 Opus (Anthropic) for mission-critical R&D, long-horizon autonomous coding tasks, complex theorem proving, and executive strategic synthesis — offering a 204k context window, 920ms TTFT, and $15.00/1M input pricing ($1.500/1M cached reads).

B

When to Choose Grok 3 Mini

Choose Grok 3 Mini (xAI) for high-speed reasoning model providing rapid answers and code generation with chain-of-thought capabilities at edge pricing — offering a 131k context window, 150ms TTFT, and $0.30/1M input pricing ($0.080/1M cached reads).

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: Claude 4 Opus or Grok 3 Mini?

Grok 3 Mini is cheaper at $0.30/1M input tokens ($1.20/1M output) compared to $15.00/1M input ($75.00/1M output) for Claude 4 Opus.

Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 4 Opus or Grok 3 Mini?

Grok 3 Mini delivers faster first-token latency at 150ms TTFT (160 tok/s throughput) compared to 920ms TTFT (46 tok/s) for Claude 4 Opus.

How do Claude 4 Opus and Grok 3 Mini compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?

On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 4 Opus scores 77.2% versus 54% for Grok 3 Mini. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 4 Opus scores 87.1% versus 68% for Grok 3 Mini (and 98.1% vs 87% on MATH-500).

When should you choose Claude 4 Opus?

Choose Claude 4 Opus (Anthropic) for mission-critical R&D, long-horizon autonomous coding tasks, complex theorem proving, and executive strategic synthesis — offering a 204k context window, 920ms TTFT, and $15.00/1M input pricing ($1.500/1M cached reads).

When should you choose Grok 3 Mini?

Choose Grok 3 Mini (xAI) for high-speed reasoning model providing rapid answers and code generation with chain-of-thought capabilities at edge pricing — offering a 131k context window, 150ms TTFT, and $0.30/1M input pricing ($0.080/1M cached reads).

Explore High-Priority Related Model Matchups