Grok 4.6 vs Grok 4.5
Head-to-head technical comparison of intelligence, capabilities, and API pricing.
Which should you use?
Grok 4.6 supersedes Grok 4.5 in xAI's line-up, so this is an upgrade question rather than a bake-off.
Both bill at $2 per 1M input tokens, so there is no cost argument for staying.
Their Arena Elo differs by only 5 points, inside the confidence intervals the public board reports, so human preference does not separate them.
Pick Grok 4.6 when
- Stronger on MMLU-Pro: 93.1% against 92.8%.
Pick Grok 4.5 when
On these measures Grok 4.5 does not lead Grok 4.6 anywhere, so pick it only for reasons outside this table — an existing integration, a region, or a contract.
Value per point of measured capability, at list input pricing: Grok 4.6 $0.021 · Grok 4.5 $0.021 per index point. Run your own token mix through the token cost calculator — a comparison at list price ignores caching and batch discounts, which move real bills more than this gap does.
Where these numbers come from
Figures as of 2026-09-07. Arena Elo and pricing are read from the public board and each vendor's own pricing page; see the full leaderboard for all 34 models and which columns are measured rather than estimated, or the benchmark matrix for scores benchmark by benchmark.