# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Grok 4.6

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.6 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-grok-4-6
- Last updated: September 21, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 9
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Grok 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 5 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Grok 4.6 leads overall 69.9 to 69.62.
- The clearest category separation is in knowledge, where the averages are 66.8 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 70.5 for Grok 4.6.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SWE-bench (Vals) in Coding, with scores of 79.6% and 95.6%.
- Grok 4.6 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 4.6 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | xAI |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 500K |
| Overall Score | 69.62 | 69.9 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 15 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $2.00 / $6.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Grok 4.6
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.1 (Supported · #11/154)
- Grok 4.6 public-lane score: 69.7 (Supported · #7/154)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | 26.5% | Grok 4.6 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| 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% | 78.3% | Grok 4.6 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | 13% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| APEX-Agents | Coming soon | 57.5% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Grok 4.6
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.8 (Supported · #13/156)
- Grok 4.6 public-lane score: 66.8 (Supported · #12/156)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| 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% | 70.8% | Grok 4.6 |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 88.2% | Grok 4.6 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 95.6% | Grok 4.6 |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | 41.4% | Grok 4.6 |
| Bug Hunt Bench | Coming soon | 27 fixes | Coming soon |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 65.9% | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Extended | Coming soon | 61.3% | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | Coming soon | 87.0% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 25.3% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Grok 4.6 public-lane score: 76.2 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (#14/49)
- Grok 4.6 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Grok 4.6
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.8 (Supported · #20/186)
- Grok 4.6 public-lane score: 70.5 (Supported · #12/186)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.6 | 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% | 94.7% | Grok 4.6 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 89.4% | Grok 4.6 |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Grok 4.6?

Grok 4.6 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.6?

The widest category gap is in knowledge, where the averages are 66.8 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 70.5 for Grok 4.6.

### 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 4.6 cover on BenchLM?

Grok 4.6 currently has 15 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Grok 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-grok-4-6)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Grok 4.6 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-grok-4-6)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Grok 4.6 profile](/models/grok-4-6)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)