💰 Unit Cost Winner Claude 3.5 Sonnet $3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out
⚡ Latency & Speed Winner Claude 3.5 Sonnet 310ms TTFT · 80 tok/s
💻 Coding (SWE) Winner Grok 3 65.8% SWE-bench · 91.5% HumanEval
🧠 STEM Reasoning Winner Grok 3 84.6% GPQA · 89.8% MATH-500

Which model is better: Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Grok 3?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Grok 3 share identical input pricing at $3.00 per 1M tokens ($15.00 vs. $15.00 output). In terms of operational performance, Claude 3.5 Sonnet delivers lower response latency at 310ms TTFT (310ms faster than Grok 3) with 80 vs. 88 tok/s throughput. Grok 3 leads coding evaluations at 65.8% SWE-bench Verified vs. 49.0% for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and 84.6% vs. 59.4% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.

Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)

Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.

Metric / Dimension Claude 3.5 Sonnet Grok 3 Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $3.00 $3.00 Identical Pricing
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $15.00 $15.00 Identical Output Pricing
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $0.300 $0.750 Claude 3.5 Sonnet is 2.5x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $3.75 $3.00 Grok 3 is 1.3x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output) 205k (8k out) 134k (16k out) Claude 3.5 Sonnet (1.5x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency 310ms 620ms Claude 3.5 Sonnet (310ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput) 80 tok/s 88 tok/s Grok 3 (+8 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 49% 65.8% Grok 3 (+16.8% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM) 59.4% 84.6% Grok 3 (+25.2% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline) 78% 80% Grok 3 (+2.0% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic) 78.3% 89.8% Grok 3 (+11.5% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 46.2 / 100 52.7 / 100 Grok 3 (+6.5 pts)

Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster

Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.

25.0M Tokens
500K 50M 250M 500M+
5.0M Tokens
100K 25M 75M 150M+
50% Cached
0% (Uncached) 25% 50% (Typical Agent) 95% Max

Estimated Monthly Spend

Claude 3.5 Sonnet $116.25

$3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.300/1M read · $3.75/1M write

Grok 3 $121.88

$3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.750/1M read · $3.00/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$5.63 / mo
(4.6% lower cost with Claude 3.5 Sonnet)
Open Full Matchup Analysis →
A

When to Choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) for legacy enterprise workflows, code review pipelines, and human-like content generation — offering a 204k context window, 310ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M cached reads).

B

When to Choose Grok 3

Choose Grok 3 (xAI) for massive compute foundation model specialized in PhD-level science reasoning, real-time data analysis, and enterprise logic — offering a 134k context window, 620ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.750/1M cached reads).

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Grok 3?

Both Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Grok 3 share identical input pricing at $3.00/1M tokens.

Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Grok 3?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet delivers faster first-token latency at 310ms TTFT (80 tok/s throughput) compared to 620ms TTFT (88 tok/s) for Grok 3.

How do Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Grok 3 compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?

On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores 49% versus 65.8% for Grok 3. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores 59.4% versus 84.6% for Grok 3 (and 78.3% vs 89.8% on MATH-500).

When should you choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet?

Choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) for legacy enterprise workflows, code review pipelines, and human-like content generation — offering a 204k context window, 310ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M cached reads).

When should you choose Grok 3?

Choose Grok 3 (xAI) for massive compute foundation model specialized in PhD-level science reasoning, real-time data analysis, and enterprise logic — offering a 134k context window, 620ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.750/1M cached reads).

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