Head-to-head comparison across 4benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
GPT-5.2
81
Grok 4.20
73
Pick GPT-5.2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Grok 4.20 only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Agentic
+8.1 difference
Coding
+3.7 difference
Reasoning
+0.4 difference
Multimodal
+9.5 difference
GPT-5.2
Grok 4.20
$1.75 / $14
$2 / $6
73 t/s
233 t/s
130.34s
10.33s
400K
2M
Pick GPT-5.2 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Grok 4.20 only becomes the better choice if reasoning is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
GPT-5.2 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 81 to 73. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
GPT-5.2's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 80.3 against 70.8. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is CharXiv, 82.1% to 60.9%. Grok 4.20 does hit back in reasoning, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
GPT-5.2 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.75 input / $14.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $2.00 input / $6.00 output per 1M tokens for Grok 4.20. That is roughly 2.3x on output cost alone. Grok 4.20 gives you the larger context window at 2M, compared with 400K for GPT-5.2.
GPT-5.2 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 81 to 73. The biggest single separator in this matchup is CharXiv, where the scores are 82.1% and 60.9%.
GPT-5.2 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 64.7 versus 61. Inside this category, Vibe Code Bench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Grok 4.20 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 53.3 versus 52.9. Inside this category, ARC-AGI-2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-5.2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 55.2 versus 47.1. Grok 4.20 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
GPT-5.2 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.3 versus 70.8. Inside this category, CharXiv is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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