Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Grok 4
Direct comparison between anthropic and xai for chat models. Specs, prices, strengths, weaknesses — decide on facts.
At a glance
- · Same price tier
- · Longer context window: Grok 4 at 256,000 tokens
- · Claude Sonnet 4.6: Best-in-class for code refactoring and multi-step pull requests
- · Grok 4: Only top-tier model with direct access to X realtime data
Spec comparison
| Spec | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Grok 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | anthropic | xai |
| Input per 1M tokens | $3.00 / 1M | $3.00 / 1M |
| Output per 1M tokens | $15.00 / 1M | $15.00 / 1M |
| Context window | 200,000 tok | 256,000 tok |
| Max output | 64,000 tok | 16,384 tok |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2025-07 | — |
| Vision | ||
| Tool calling | ||
| Structured output | ||
| Reasoning |
Claude Sonnet 4.6 — strengths
- +Best-in-class for code refactoring and multi-step pull requests
- +Very stable tool-use loops — low hallucination on arguments
- +64k output tokens fit whole files in one response
Grok 4 — strengths
- +Only top-tier model with direct access to X realtime data
- +Strong reasoning, competitive with o1/o3 on math benchmarks
- +Less refusal bias on political or controversial topics
Claude Sonnet 4.6 — weaknesses
- −Knowledge cutoff July 2025 — no recent web knowledge
- −No native JSON mode — schema enforcement via tool-call trick
Grok 4 — weaknesses
- −Code generation behind Sonnet 4.6 and GPT-5.4
- −Weaker structured-output guarantees than OpenAI/Anthropic