Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Grok 3

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Grok 3: Claude Sonnet 4.6 is cheaper by 0% on average. Claude Sonnet 4.6 from Azure AI Foundry (1,000,000-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
01,000,000
400
0131,072
5,000
01,000,000
Azure AI Foundry
$2,283/mo
Input $3.00/M · Output $15.00/M
Grok 3Cheaper
xAI
$2,283/mo
Input $3.00/M · Output $15.00/M
At this workload, Grok 3 is 0% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.6 — a savings of $0.000000/month ($0.000000/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: grok-3
  provider: xai
fallback:
  model: claude-sonnet-4-6
  provider: azure-ai-foundry
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 }   # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Grok 3
xAI
Input price $3.00/M $3.00/M
Output price $15.00/M $15.00/M
Context window 1,000,000 131,072
Max output 64,000 131,072
Function calling
Vision
Audio input
Reasoning
Prompt caching
Structured output
Pricing verified May 12, 2026 May 12, 2026
Cheaper option
Larger context
1,000,000 tokens
More capabilities
5 of 6 capability flags advertised

Benchmark comparison

Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.

Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
Claude Sonnet 4.6
1,466
Grok 3
1,402
τ-bench (retail)agent
Claude Sonnet 4.6
91.7%
Grok 3
GPQA Diamondreasoning
Claude Sonnet 4.6
89.9%
Grok 3
75.4%
MMLUgeneral
Claude Sonnet 4.6
89.3%
Grok 3
MMLU-Proreasoning
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Grok 3
79.9%
SWE-bench Verifiedagent
Claude Sonnet 4.6
79.6%
Grok 3
MMMU-Promultimodal
Claude Sonnet 4.6
74.5%
Grok 3
ARC-AGI-2reasoning
Claude Sonnet 4.6
58.3%
Grok 3
AIME 2024math
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Grok 3
52.2%
Humanity's Last Examreasoning
Claude Sonnet 4.6
33.2%
Grok 3