# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Grok 4.5

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.5 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-grok-4-5
- Last updated: October 7, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 11
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Grok 4.5 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 65.89 to 63.97.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 78.7 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 50.4 for Grok 4.5.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SWE-bench (Vals) in Coding, with scores of 79.6% and 86.6%.
- Grok 4.5 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Claude Sonnet 5 also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.5 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | xAI |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 500K |
| Overall Score | 65.89 | 63.97 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 17 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $2.00 / $6.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.8 (Supported · #16/122)
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 57.6 (Supported · #29/122)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | 15.7% | Grok 4.5 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | 83.3% | Grok 4.5 |
| 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% | 67.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| deepSwe | Coming soon | 53% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 59 (Supported · #24/146)
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 57.7 (Supported · #27/146)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 64.7% | Grok 4.5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | 78% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | 83.3% | Grok 4.5 |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CursorBench 3.2 | 61.5% | 66.7% | Grok 4.5 |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 87.4% | Grok 4.5 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 86.6% | Grok 4.5 |
| CursorBench 4.0 | 34.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | Coming soon | 89.9% | Coming soon |
| PostTrainBench v1.1 | Coming soon | 23.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 50.4 (#28/28)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 52.6% | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-3 | Coming soon | 0.3% | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-1 | Coming soon | 85.67% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.4 (#15/49)
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 79.5 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Grok 4.5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64 (Supported · #29/174)
- Grok 4.5 public-lane score: 67 (Supported · #19/174)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.5 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 92.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 89.2% | Grok 4.5 |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Grok 4.5?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.5?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 78.7 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 50.4 for Grok 4.5.

### 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 4.5 cover on BenchLM?

Grok 4.5 currently has 17 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Grok 4.5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-grok-4-5)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Grok 4.5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-grok-4-5)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Grok 4.5 profile](/models/grok-4-5)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)