Grok 4.6 is xAI's best model for research — it scores 88/100 vs 86/100 for Grok 4, at $2/1M input tokens. Across all providers, Claude Fable 5 still leads research at 100/100 — worth considering if you're not committed to xAI.
The shortest way to see the safest default, the lower-cost option, and the specialist pick before you read deeper.
Grok 4.6 is the safest overall answer here when you want the strongest default instead of the lowest list price.
Mistral: Mistral Nemo is the lower-cost option to start with when you still need useful output at scale.
Grok 4 is the better pick when large documents, transcripts, or knowledge-heavy work lead the decision.
Grok 4.6 leads xAI's lineup for research at 88/100 ($2/1M input, 500K context).
Grok 4.6 is the value pick at $2/1M input with a research score of 88/100.
Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic) is the overall research leader at 100/100 if provider choice is open.
Choose Grok 4.6 when research quality is the priority and you're staying on xAI.
Choose Grok 4.6 when token volume matters more than peak quality.
Teams open to other providers should also evaluate Claude Fable 5 before committing.
Switch the scoring lens to see whether the top answer changes when you care more about cost, speed, or long-document work.
xAI / Balanced / Aug 27, 2026
Finishes agent tasks in half the turns — cheap where it counts.
Ranks models by the broadest mix of coding, writing, research, and long-context usefulness.
You need a published SWE-bench score to justify the pick, or your prompts routinely cross 200K tokens where the price doubles.
The fastest way to see where the recommendation shifts when your priority changes.
Finishes agent tasks in half the turns — cheap where it counts.
Strong coding value with 2M context — an underrated pick at this price.
Best cost-per-solved-task coding agent — efficiency over ceiling.
Every figure below is the provider's list price or a published capability score — the same numbers the recommendation on this page is built from.
| Model | Input | Output | Est. month | Context | Speed | Coding | Writing | Research |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grok 4.6xAI | $2.00/1M | $6.00/1M | $32 | 500k tokens | Fast | 86 | 84 | 88 |
| Grok 4xAI | $2.00/1M | $6.00/1M | $32 | 2M tokens | Fast | 92 | 70 | 86 |
| Grok 4.5xAI | $2.00/1M | $6.00/1M | $32 | 500k tokens | Fast | 94 | 72 | 84 |
Capability scores are out of 100 and reflect our own weighting of published benchmarks and production signals — see how we evaluate models. “Est. month” assumes 10M input and 2M output tokens at list price, with no batch or caching discounts applied, so treat it as a ceiling.
What each one is genuinely good at, where it falls down, and the situations we would steer you away from it — not just the headline score.
xAI's long-horizon agent model — it finishes agentic tasks in roughly half the turns of its rivals, which makes it cheaper in practice than its per-token price suggests.
You need a published SWE-bench score to justify the pick, or your prompts routinely cross 200K tokens where the price doubles.
Buy it for turn efficiency, not for benchmark ceilings. On long agent runs, finishing in half the turns beats a model that scores two points higher and takes twice as many round trips.
Released August 12, 2026, succeeding Grok 4.5. Long-context billing is a cliff, not a ramp: at 200K tokens and above the whole request is charged at $4/$12. DeepSWE 65.9%, CursorBench 3.2 70.8%, FrontierCode 1.1 Extended 61.3%, Terminal-Bench 3.0 26.5%, APEX-Agents 57.5%.
xAI's latest flagship with strong coding benchmark performance, a 2M token context window, and aggressive pricing at $2/$6 per million tokens.
You need the highest writing quality or the most reliable production-grade output — Claude wins both.
Strong coding benchmark with excellent value. The $2/$6 pricing and 2M context make it competitive with more expensive alternatives.
Best when you want near-flagship coding quality with a massive context window at a mid-tier price.
xAI's first coding- and agent-focused model — the first full-scale deployment of the 1.5T-parameter V9 MoE base, trained with real developer-session data from Cursor.
You need the highest solve rate per attempt or verified low hallucination — Claude Opus 5 is the safer premium pick.
The efficiency play among coding agents. Grok 4.5 wins on cost-per-solved-task and marathon sessions, not raw capability. If your agent bill is the problem, it's the answer; if quality ceiling is the problem, it isn't.
Released July 8, 2026 on the 1.5T-parameter V9 base. Pricing verified on docs.x.ai: $2/$6 under 200K prompt tokens, $4/$12 above. Full access initially gated to SuperGrok Heavy; staged rollout to SuperGrok $30 tier. EU availability lagged launch.
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Grok 4.6 — it scores 88/100 on research in this directory, ahead of Grok 4 at 86/100. Finishes agent tasks in half the turns — cheap where it counts.
Not overall. Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic) leads the directory for research at 100/100 vs Grok 4.6's 88/100. Grok 4.6 is the best pick if you're staying within xAI's ecosystem.
Grok 4.6 at $2/1M input tokens (research score: 88/100). Use it for volume work and reserve Grok 4.6 for the tasks where quality matters most.
$2/1M input tokens and $6/1M output tokens via the API, or through SuperGrok at $30/mo for chat use. Context window: 500K tokens. On a moderate month — 10M input and 2M output tokens — that works out to about $32.00, against $32.00 for Grok 4.6.
No published SWE-bench Verified or SWE-bench Pro figure, so it cannot be compared directly on the standard coding leaderboard. GPT-5.6 Sol Max beats it on DeepSWE v1.1 and Terminal-Bench 3.0. Concretely, avoid it if you need a published SWE-bench score to justify the pick, or your prompts routinely cross 200K tokens where the price doubles. If none of that is negotiable, Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic) is the cross-provider leader at 100/100.
long-horizon research agents that work a topic across many sequential steps, working through an unfamiliar codebase over an extended agent session, and interactive and visual work where turn count drives the real bill. Its 500K-token context window is the practical limit on how much you can hand it in one go.
They are the same model here — Grok 4.6 is both xAI's strongest research pick and its best value, so there is no trade-off to make.