# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Grok 4.20

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.20 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-grok-4-20-beta
- Last updated: September 22, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 10
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Grok 4.20 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 5 leads overall 69.47 to 67.97.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 77.4 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 34.3 for Grok 4.20.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.0 in Agentic, with scores of 80.4% and 47.1%.
- Grok 4.20 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Grok 4.20 also has the larger context window at 2M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.20 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | xAI |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 2M |
| Overall Score | 69.47 | 67.97 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 23 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $2.00 / $6.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.2 (Supported · #13/157)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 29.5 (Supported · #147/157)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | 47.1% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 44.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | Coming soon | 62.8% | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | Coming soon | 38.36% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64 (Supported · #16/159)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 29.8 (Supported · #149/159)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | 76.7% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 51.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 84.3% | Grok 4.20 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 72.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench Pro | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | Coming soon | 4.06% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 34.3 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 53.3% | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-3 | Coming soon | 0.1% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (#15/50)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 34.6 (#45/50)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | 60.9% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 75.2% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 54.1% | Coming soon |
| SimpleVQA | Coming soon | 57.4% | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (MM) | Coming soon | 65.8% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.4 (Supported · #23/189)
- Grok 4.20 public-lane score: 50.5 (Supported · #87/189)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.20 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | 31.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 88.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 86.3% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 88.5% | Coming soon |
| HealthBench Hard | Coming soon | 20.3% | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (Text) | Coming soon | 50.2% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Grok 4.20?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.20?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 77.4 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 34.3 for Grok 4.20.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Grok 4.20 cover on BenchLM?

Grok 4.20 currently has 23 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Grok 4.20 Multi-agent](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-grok-4-20-multi-agent-beta)
- [Grok 4.20 vs Grok 4.20 Multi-agent](/compare/grok-4-20-beta-vs-grok-4-20-multi-agent-beta)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Grok 4.20 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-grok-4-20-beta)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Grok 4.20 profile](/models/grok-4-20-beta)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)