Model Comparison
Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Grok 4.6
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) leads Grok 4.6 (high) by 583 Elo, and their 95% ranges sit 481 Elo apart. Among 78 models, each ranked by its best configuration, Claude Sonnet 5.5 is #2 and Grok 4.6 is #19. Cost per script: $1.38 for Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) and $0.156 for Grok 4.6 (high).
Last updated , from board data generated at 01:13 UTC.
Picks and Verdict
PickClaude Sonnet 5.5
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (high)
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (high) for the drafts you'd otherwise give Grok 4.6, since the board can't separate the two and Sonnet costs $0.092 a script and about a minute.
PickGrok 4.6
Grok 4.6 (high)
Pick Grok 4.6 (high) for drafts where tone matters more than polish, since its Tone & Voice Match of 78.8 beats Sonnet's three cheapest settings, at $0.156 a script.
Grok 4.6, the #19 model of 78, has one setting on the board, and Claude Sonnet 5.5, the #2 model, already matches it at high. Claude Sonnet 5.5 (high) sits 62 Elo above Grok 4.6 (high) with overlapping 95% ranges, so the board can't separate them, and Sonnet gets there for $0.092 and about a minute against $0.156 and about five. Go lower and Grok pulls ahead: Sonnet's medium and low settings fall below it with ranges that don't touch, so high is the floor I'd use. Go higher and Sonnet pulls clear. Claude Sonnet 5.5 (xhigh) sits 370 Elo above Grok and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) 583 above it, both with separate ranges. Grok has real strengths: it beats Sonnet at high on Tone & Voice Match and lands closer to the target length. Writing craft is where it falls behind, five points under Sonnet at high, and its scores vary more between drafts. If price brought you to Grok, Sonnet at high does the same job for about six cents less. For a script I'd publish, I'd step up to xhigh at $0.302.
Disclosure: Claude Sonnet 5.5 comes from the same lab as one of the four judges, Claude Opus 5.5. The other three sit outside its lab, so it is never scored by its own lab alone (how the panel works). The judge analysis measures how much each judge favors its own lab.
How to Read the Writing Score, Writing Elo and 95% Ranges
Writing Score and Writing Elo. The Writing Score (0 to 100) is the weighted average of the nine metric scores: seven from the judges, Length Adherence from code and the Slop Score half from each. The Writing Elo is a rating from pairwise comparisons: on each script, each configuration's average across its drafts is compared with every other configuration's, and gaps within the draft-to-draft variation count as draws. Elo rewards winning often, so the two can put configurations in a different order.
Elo ranges. Each 95% range shows how far a configuration's Elo could move if the drafts had come out slightly differently. It comes from resampling every configuration's recorded draft scores on each reference script and ranking again. Comparing two separate ranges does not test the Elo gap between them: ranges far apart are strong evidence for the order, and overlapping ranges do not mean a tie. The reference scripts stay fixed, so the ranges say nothing about new scripts. The methodology page has the full description.
All Thinking Levels of Both Models
Every ranked configuration of Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Grok 4.6, scored on the same 10 scripts by the same four judges.
- Each row is one configuration: the model at one thinking level. The dot is its Writing Elo, a rating from pairwise comparisons of the scores on each script, and the bar is its 95% range: how far that Elo could move if the drafts had come out slightly differently.
- When two bars overlap, the board cannot order those two configurations. Bars far apart are strong evidence for the order.
- The table under the chart lists the same configurations in the same order and adds the Writing Score (the 0 to 100 consensus of the judges and code), cost, time and configuration rank (the place among all configurations on the board).
Shaded rows are the configurations chosen for the metric comparison below.
| Configuration | Writing Elo | 95% Range | Writing Score | Cost / Script | Time / Script | Reasoning Tokens | Configuration Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) | 2561 | 2504 to 2614 | 84.6 | $1.38 | 14.3 min | N/A | #3 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 (xhigh) | 2348 | 2304 to 2383 | 83.2 | $0.302 | 3.1 min | N/A | #10 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 (high) | 2040 | 1984 to 2087 | 81.0 | $0.092 | 1.0 min | N/A | #27 |
| Grok 4.6 (high) | 1978 | 1930 to 2023 | 80.3 | $0.156 | 5.2 min | 18,588 | #36 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 (medium) | 1856 | 1812 to 1900 | 79.4 | $0.065 | 0.6 min | N/A | #47 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 (low) | 1808 | 1771 to 1843 | 78.9 | $0.061 | 0.7 min | N/A | #50 |
Cost is one script at the API list price of the route used, uncached and without judging. Time is the average for one accepted script, retries included. N/A under Reasoning Tokens means the board has no separate reasoning count for that route.
Computed Findings Across Thinking Levels
Each finding is computed from the configurations above. Where two 95% ranges overlap, the board cannot order those two configurations.
- Best Configurations Head to Head. Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) leads Grok 4.6 (high) by 583 Elo, and their 95% ranges do not overlap (2504 to 2614 against 1930 to 2023), which is strong evidence for that order.
- Same Level Name, Side by Side. At high, the one level name both models use, Claude Sonnet 5.5 has the higher Writing Elo: 2040 against 1978. Their 95% ranges overlap there. Level names come from each provider, so the same name does not promise the same reasoning budget.
- Cheapest Claude Sonnet 5.5 Configuration Above Grok 4.6's Best. The cheapest Claude Sonnet 5.5 configuration with a higher Writing Elo than Grok 4.6 (high), at Elo 1978 and $0.156 per script, is Claude Sonnet 5.5 (high), at Elo 2040 and $0.092 per script. Their 95% ranges overlap, so the board cannot separate them. It costs less than the configuration it beats.
- Lowest to Highest Thinking Level. Claude Sonnet 5.5 moves +753 Elo from low to max effort, at about 23 times the cost per script.
Two Chosen Configurations Compared
Pick one configuration of each model to compare their metric scores, consistency across drafts and per-script scores. Each menu starts on the model's best configuration.
Scores by Metric
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) scores higher on all nine metrics. Weighted by each metric's share of the Writing Score, Writing Craft & Clarity does the most to put Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) ahead, with a 7.8-point lead on that metric. The weight beside each metric is its share of the Writing Score.
Consistency Across Drafts
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) | Grok 4.6 (high) | |
|---|---|---|
| Score spread across drafts (±) | 1.22 | 1.82 |
| Lowest script score | 83.0 Script 10 | 78.5 Script 3 |
| Highest script score | 86.7 Script 9 | 82.8 Script 6 |
| Range across scripts | 3.7 | 4.3 |
Spread is how much the Writing Score moves between a configuration's drafts, and lower is steadier. Green marks the better number in each row.
Scores by Script
Writing Score on each reference script. Gap is Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) minus Grok 4.6 (high), and the higher score is in bold.
| Script | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (max effort) | Grok 4.6 (high) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Script 1 opinion / warning explainer | 84.2 | 81.6 | +2.6 |
| Script 2 news-analysis / skeptical explainer | 84.8 | 80.8 | +4.0 |
| Script 3 personal roadmap / opinion | 84.0 | 78.5 | +5.5 |
| Script 4 short explainer | 85.0 | 80.2 | +4.8 |
| Script 5 news-analysis / opinion explainer | 84.8 | 81.1 | +3.7 |
| Script 6 founder announcement / personal origin story | 84.6 | 82.8 | +1.8 |
| Script 7 personal technical walkthrough / agentic workflow case study | 85.0 | 79.0 | +6.0 |
| Script 8 product release announcement / personal observation | 83.9 | 79.7 | +4.2 |
| Script 9 career guide / hiring analysis | 86.7 | 80.4 | +6.3 |
| Script 10 engineering process walkthrough / presentation adaptation | 83.0 | 79.1 | +3.9 |
Scorecards and Thinking Pages
Each configuration name in the table above opens its own scorecard.
Compare With Another Model
Pick a second model. A pair with its own written match-up opens that page, and any other pair opens in the comparison tool.
Nearby Match-Ups by Best Writing Elo
Every configuration wrote five drafts for each of the same 10 briefs, from the same prompt. Generation was closed-book, with the prompt as the only source and no web search or other tools. Each judge scores every draft once: Claude Opus 5.5 at medium effort through the Claude Code subscription, GPT-6.1 Sol at medium reasoning through the Codex CLI, GLM 5.3 Flash through OpenRouter, and Jev 1.13, a typed judge from TypeSafe that answers each metric as a multiple-choice question. The channel's finished script is their reference for the voice, and it gets no score on the board itself.
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