Model Comparison
Grok 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Grok 4.6 (high) leads Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) by 119 Elo, and their 95% ranges sit 26 Elo apart. Among 78 models, each ranked by its best configuration, Grok 4.6 is #19 and Claude Sonnet 5 is #23. Cost per script: $0.156 for Grok 4.6 (high) and $0.696 for Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort).
Last updated , from board data generated at 01:13 UTC.
Picks and Verdict
PickGrok 4.6
Grok 4.6 (high)
Pick Grok 4.6 (high) for a script you'll edit anyway, since it ranks above both Sonnet settings at $0.156 a script.
PickClaude Sonnet 5
Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort)
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) when the draft has to land on the requested length, since it scores 96.6 on Length Adherence at $0.696 a script.
Grok 4.6 writes the higher-ranked script and charges less for it. Grok 4.6 (high) sits 119 Elo above Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort), with separate 95% ranges. That is the #19 model of 78 against the #23 model, each ranked by its best setting. Sonnet at max effort costs $0.696 and twelve minutes a script, about four and a half times Grok's $0.156 and more than twice the wait. Grok sounds more like me, almost four points up on tone, and its hook leads by the same margin. It also carries more substance, about five points. Sonnet hits the length better, almost six points ahead on Length Adherence, and its sentences are a little cleaner. Craft is Grok's weak spot, so expect to edit its prose. Sonnet's cheaper setting doesn't change the picture. Claude Sonnet 5 (high) drops to $0.121 and under two minutes, but it ends up 326 Elo behind Grok. I'd take Grok and plan an editing pass.
Disclosure: Claude Sonnet 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 Grok 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 5, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grok 4.6 (high) | 1978 | 1930 to 2023 | 80.3 | $0.156 | 5.2 min | 18,588 | #36 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) | 1859 | 1812 to 1904 | 79.2 | $0.696 | 12.0 min | N/A | #45 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 (high) | 1652 | 1602 to 1703 | 76.6 | $0.121 | 1.9 min | N/A | #58 |
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. Grok 4.6 (high) leads Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) by 119 Elo, and their 95% ranges do not overlap (1930 to 2023 against 1812 to 1904), which is strong evidence for that order.
- Every Grok 4.6 Configuration Ranks Higher. Grok 4.6 (high), the only Grok 4.6 configuration on the board, ranks above both Claude Sonnet 5 configurations, including Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) at Elo 1859.
- Same Level Name, Side by Side. At high, the one level name both models use, Grok 4.6 has the higher Writing Elo: 1978 against 1652. Their 95% ranges do not overlap there. Level names come from each provider, so the same name does not promise the same reasoning budget.
- Lowest to Highest Thinking Level. Claude Sonnet 5 moves +207 Elo from high to max effort, at about 5.8 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
Grok 4.6 (high) scores higher on five of the nine metrics and Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) on four. Weighted by each metric's share of the Writing Score, Substance, Accuracy & Value does the most to put Grok 4.6 (high) ahead, with a 5.1-point lead on that metric. The weight beside each metric is its share of the Writing Score.
Consistency Across Drafts
| Grok 4.6 (high) | Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) | |
|---|---|---|
| Score spread across drafts (±) | 1.82 | 2.39 |
| Lowest script score | 78.5 Script 3 | 75.7 Script 4 |
| Highest script score | 82.8 Script 6 | 81.5 Script 9 |
| Range across scripts | 4.3 | 5.8 |
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 Grok 4.6 (high) minus Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort), and the higher score is in bold.
| Script | Grok 4.6 (high) | Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Script 1 opinion / warning explainer | 81.6 | 77.4 | +4.2 |
| Script 2 news-analysis / skeptical explainer | 80.8 | 78.9 | +1.9 |
| Script 3 personal roadmap / opinion | 78.5 | 78.1 | +0.4 |
| Script 4 short explainer | 80.2 | 75.7 | +4.5 |
| Script 5 news-analysis / opinion explainer | 81.1 | 80.9 | +0.2 |
| Script 6 founder announcement / personal origin story | 82.8 | 81.1 | +1.7 |
| Script 7 personal technical walkthrough / agentic workflow case study | 79.0 | 81.2 | -2.2 |
| Script 8 product release announcement / personal observation | 79.7 | 79.3 | +0.4 |
| Script 9 career guide / hiring analysis | 80.4 | 81.5 | -1.1 |
| Script 10 engineering process walkthrough / presentation adaptation | 79.1 | 78.0 | +1.1 |
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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