Claude Opus 4.6 vs Grok 3
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Grok 3: Grok 3 is cheaper by 40% on average. Claude Opus 4.6 from Azure AI Foundry (200,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls) vs. Grok 3 from xAI (131,072-token context, tool calls). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.
Side-by-side cost
Live workload comparison
Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.
3,000
0200,000
400
0131,072
5,000
01,000,000
At this workload, Grok 3 is 40% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.6 — a savings of $1,522/month ($18,263/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
model: grok-3
provider: xai
fallback:
model: claude-opus-4-6
provider: azure-ai-foundry
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 } # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live| Claude Opus 4.6 | Grok 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $5.00/M | $3.00/M |
| Output price | $25.00/M | $15.00/M |
| Context window | 200,000 | 131,072 |
| Max output | 128,000 | 131,072 |
| Function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | — |
| Audio input | — | — |
| Reasoning | ✓ | — |
| Prompt caching | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured output | ✓ | — |
| Pricing verified | May 12, 2026 | May 12, 2026 |
Benchmark comparison
Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.
Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
Claude Opus 4.6
1,502
Grok 3
1,402