💰 Unit Cost Winner Grok 3 Mini $0.30/1M in · $1.20/1M out
⚡ Latency & Speed Winner Grok 3 Mini 150ms TTFT · 160 tok/s
💻 Coding (SWE) Winner Claude Opus 5.5 89.9% SWE-bench · 97.6% HumanEval
🧠 STEM Reasoning Winner Claude Opus 5.5 93.2% GPQA · 98% MATH-500

Which model is better: Claude Opus 5.5 or Grok 3 Mini?

Grok 3 Mini is 92.5% cheaper for input tokens ($0.30 vs. $4.00 per 1M tokens) and $1.20 vs. $20.00 for output tokens (13.3x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Grok 3 Mini delivers lower response latency at 150ms TTFT (530ms faster than Claude Opus 5.5) with 160 vs. 95 tok/s throughput. Claude Opus 5.5 leads coding evaluations at 89.9% SWE-bench Verified vs. 54.0% for Grok 3 Mini and 93.2% vs. 68.0% 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 Opus 5.5 Grok 3 Mini Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $4.00 $0.30 Grok 3 Mini is 13.3x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $20.00 $1.20 Grok 3 Mini (94.0% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $0.200 $0.080 Grok 3 Mini is 2.5x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $5.00 $0.30 Grok 3 Mini is 16.7x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output) 1,024k (128k out) 131k (16k out) Claude Opus 5.5 (7.8x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency 680ms 150ms Grok 3 Mini (530ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput) 95 tok/s 160 tok/s Grok 3 Mini (+65 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 89.9% 54% Claude Opus 5.5 (+35.9% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM) 93.2% 68% Claude Opus 5.5 (+25.2% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline) 92.1% 80% Claude Opus 5.5 (+12.1% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic) 98% 87% Claude Opus 5.5 (+11.0% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 57.8 / 100 69.2 / 100 Grok 3 Mini (+11.4 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 Opus 5.5 $152.50

$4.00/1M in · $20.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.200/1M read · $5.00/1M write

Grok 3 Mini $10.75

$0.30/1M in · $1.20/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.080/1M read · $0.30/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$141.75 / mo
(93.0% lower cost with Grok 3 Mini)
Open Full Matchup Analysis →
A

When to Choose Claude Opus 5.5

Choose Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) for top-ranked frontier intelligence leader for autonomous multi-step agentic coding, repository-scale migrations, and complex scientific reasoning at a 40% lower workload cost than Opus 5 — offering a 1,024k context window, 680ms TTFT, and $4.00/1M input pricing ($0.200/1M cached reads).

B

When to Choose Grok 3 Mini

Choose Grok 3 Mini (xAI) for high-speed reasoning model providing rapid answers and code generation with chain-of-thought capabilities at edge pricing — offering a 131k context window, 150ms TTFT, and $0.30/1M input pricing ($0.080/1M cached reads).

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: Claude Opus 5.5 or Grok 3 Mini?

Grok 3 Mini is cheaper at $0.30/1M input tokens ($1.20/1M output) compared to $4.00/1M input ($20.00/1M output) for Claude Opus 5.5.

Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude Opus 5.5 or Grok 3 Mini?

Grok 3 Mini delivers faster first-token latency at 150ms TTFT (160 tok/s throughput) compared to 680ms TTFT (95 tok/s) for Claude Opus 5.5.

How do Claude Opus 5.5 and Grok 3 Mini compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?

On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude Opus 5.5 scores 89.9% versus 54% for Grok 3 Mini. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude Opus 5.5 scores 93.2% versus 68% for Grok 3 Mini (and 98% vs 87% on MATH-500).

When should you choose Claude Opus 5.5?

Choose Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) for top-ranked frontier intelligence leader for autonomous multi-step agentic coding, repository-scale migrations, and complex scientific reasoning at a 40% lower workload cost than Opus 5 — offering a 1,024k context window, 680ms TTFT, and $4.00/1M input pricing ($0.200/1M cached reads).

When should you choose Grok 3 Mini?

Choose Grok 3 Mini (xAI) for high-speed reasoning model providing rapid answers and code generation with chain-of-thought capabilities at edge pricing — offering a 131k context window, 150ms TTFT, and $0.30/1M input pricing ($0.080/1M cached reads).

Explore High-Priority Related Model Matchups