Model Comparison
Grok 4.7 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Too close to call: the best configurations, Grok 4.7 (medium) and Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort), are 65 Elo apart, and their 95% ranges overlap. Among 78 models, each ranked by its best configuration, Grok 4.7 is #22 and Claude Sonnet 5 is #23. Cost per script: $0.215 for Grok 4.7 (medium) and $0.696 for Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort).
Last updated , from board data generated at 01:13 UTC.
Picks and Verdict
PickGrok 4.7
Grok 4.7 (medium)
Pick Grok 4.7 (medium) for better tone and substance than Sonnet's best at $0.215 instead of $0.696.
PickClaude Sonnet 5
Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort)
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) when the script has to hit its length and read cleanly, with length at 96.6 against 78.7 for Grok's best.
The board can't order these two at the top. Grok 4.7 (medium) and Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) are 65 Elo apart with overlapping 95% ranges. Those are the settings each model is ranked by, as the #22 model and the #23 model of 78. At the bottom the order is clearer: Grok 4.7 (low) leads Claude Sonnet 5 (high) by 182 Elo with ranges apart. Grok is also cheaper at both ends. Its best costs $0.215 a script against $0.696 for Sonnet's, and even Grok 4.7 (low), at $0.064, has a range that reaches Sonnet at max effort. At high, the one level name both use, Grok leads by 245 Elo, but that is Grok's highest level against Sonnet's lowest. The scripts fail in different places. Sonnet writes cleaner prose and hits the length, about four and a half points ahead on craft and eighteen on length, and its drafts are a bit steadier. Grok brings more substance, stronger hooks and better visual cues, and wins five of the nine metrics. Grok also leads on tone, the metric with the most weight, so I'd start with Grok at medium.
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 4.7 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 4.7 (medium) | 1924 | 1863 to 1974 | 79.6 | $0.215 | 6.2 min | 27,687 | #42 |
| Grok 4.7 (high) | 1897 | 1850 to 1939 | 79.6 | $0.305 | 9.6 min | 42,549 | #43 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) | 1859 | 1812 to 1904 | 79.2 | $0.696 | 12.0 min | N/A | #45 |
| Grok 4.7 (low) | 1834 | 1784 to 1890 | 79.0 | $0.064 | 1.7 min | 2,760 | #48 |
| 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 4.7 (medium) at Elo 1924 (range 1863 to 1974) and Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) at Elo 1859 (range 1812 to 1904) have overlapping 95% ranges, so the board cannot separate the two best configurations.
- Lowest Thinking Levels Head to Head. At their lowest thinking levels, Grok 4.7 (low) at Elo 1834 and $0.064 per script leads Claude Sonnet 5 (high) at Elo 1652 and $0.121 per script by 182 Elo. Their 95% ranges do not overlap.
- Same Level Name, Side by Side. At high, the one level name both models use, Grok 4.7 has the higher Writing Elo: 1897 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.
- Cheapest Configuration Overlapping the Top One. Grok 4.7 (low), at $0.064 per script, is the cheapest configuration whose 95% range overlaps that of Grok 4.7 (medium), at $0.215 per script: 1784 to 1890 against 1863 to 1974, so the board cannot separate them. Grok 4.7 (medium) costs about 3.4 times as much per script.
- Cheapest Grok 4.7 Configuration Above Claude Sonnet 5's Best. The cheapest Grok 4.7 configuration with a higher Writing Elo than Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort), at Elo 1859 and $0.696 per script, is Grok 4.7 (medium), at Elo 1924 and $0.215 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. Grok 4.7 moves +63 Elo from low to high, at about 4.8 times the cost per script. 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 4.7 (medium) 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 4.7 (medium) ahead, with a 6.3-point lead on that metric. The weight beside each metric is its share of the Writing Score.
Consistency Across Drafts
| Grok 4.7 (medium) | Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) | |
|---|---|---|
| Score spread across drafts (±) | 3.00 | 2.39 |
| Lowest script score | 75.6 Script 10 | 75.7 Script 4 |
| Highest script score | 82.2 Script 2 | 81.5 Script 9 |
| Range across scripts | 6.6 | 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 4.7 (medium) minus Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort), and the higher score is in bold.
| Script | Grok 4.7 (medium) | Claude Sonnet 5 (max effort) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Script 1 opinion / warning explainer | 81.5 | 77.4 | +4.1 |
| Script 2 news-analysis / skeptical explainer | 82.2 | 78.9 | +3.3 |
| Script 3 personal roadmap / opinion | 81.6 | 78.1 | +3.5 |
| Script 4 short explainer | 76.9 | 75.7 | +1.2 |
| Script 5 news-analysis / opinion explainer | 80.5 | 80.9 | -0.4 |
| Script 6 founder announcement / personal origin story | 82.0 | 81.1 | +0.9 |
| Script 7 personal technical walkthrough / agentic workflow case study | 76.5 | 81.2 | -4.7 |
| Script 8 product release announcement / personal observation | 79.0 | 79.3 | -0.3 |
| Script 9 career guide / hiring analysis | 80.2 | 81.5 | -1.3 |
| Script 10 engineering process walkthrough / presentation adaptation | 75.6 | 78.0 | -2.4 |
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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