Seed 1.6 vs Grok 3 [Beta]

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Seed 1.6 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 65 to 38. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Seed 1.6's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 79.6 against 43.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 80 to 40.

Seed 1.6 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Grok 3 [Beta] is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Grok 3 [Beta].

Quick Verdict

Pick Seed 1.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Grok 3 [Beta] only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

62.3

Grok 3 [Beta]

35.7

63
Terminal-Bench 2.0
32
67
BrowseComp
41
58
OSWorld-Verified
36

Coding

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

42.4

Grok 3 [Beta]

16.3

64
HumanEval
34
46
SWE-bench Verified
19
38
LiveCodeBench
11
46
SWE-bench Pro
21

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

79.6

Grok 3 [Beta]

43.2

80
MMMU-Pro
40
79
OfficeQA Pro
47

Reasoning

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

74.5

Grok 3 [Beta]

47.4

69
SimpleQA
40
69
MuSR
38
86
BBH
62
77
LongBench v2
53
78
MRCRv2
52

Knowledge

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

56.4

Grok 3 [Beta]

34

73
MMLU
42
72
GPQA
41
70
SuperGPQA
39
68
OpenBookQA
37
75
MMLU-Pro
53
11
HLE
3
68
FrontierScience
40

Instruction Following

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

87

Grok 3 [Beta]

67

87
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

83.4

Grok 3 [Beta]

58.7

88
MGSM
60
81
MMLU-ProX
58

Mathematics

Seed 1.6

Seed 1.6

75.9

Grok 3 [Beta]

49.1

72
AIME 2023
42
74
AIME 2024
44
73
AIME 2025
43
68
HMMT Feb 2023
38
70
HMMT Feb 2024
40
69
HMMT Feb 2025
39
71
BRUMO 2025
41
82
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 is ahead overall, 65 to 38. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 80 and 40.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.4 versus 34. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 42.4 versus 16.3. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 49.1. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 74.5 versus 47.4. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 62.3 versus 35.7. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 43.2. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Seed 1.6 or Grok 3 [Beta]?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 58.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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