AI agents · OpenClaw · self-hosting · automation

Quick Answer

Grok 4.5 vs Claude Opus 5 vs GPT-5.6 Sol (July 2026)

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The Short Answer

Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol are the frontier picks; Grok 4.5 is the value pick. Opus 5 (launched July 24, 2026) leads SWE-bench Pro and Frontier-Bench; GPT-5.6 Sol leads SWE-bench Verified and the coding-agent index; Grok 4.5 ($2/$6 per MTok) trades a few benchmark points for roughly 3x lower cost per task.

Head-to-Head

Grok 4.5Claude Opus 5GPT-5.6 Sol
MakerxAIAnthropicOpenAI
API in/out ($/MTok)$2 / $6$5 / $25$5 / $30
30K/5K task cost~$0.09~$0.28~$0.30
SWE-bench Protrails79.2%64.6%
SWE-bench Verifiedtrails~97%~96.2%
Coding Agent Indexmid7880 (leads)
Context~1M (Grok 4.3 lineage)1Mlarge

Where Each Wins

  • Hardest coding + agentic + computer use → Claude Opus 5. It beats GPT-5.6 Sol on six benchmarks including agentic coding and computer use, and tops Frontier-Bench. Effort toggle (low→max) lets you trade cost for quality.
  • Terminal coding + verified SWE-bench + raw agent index → GPT-5.6 Sol. Sol leads SWE-bench Verified (~96.2%) and the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index (80), and is strong on Terminal-Bench v2.
  • Cost-per-task, high-volume agents → Grok 4.5. At $2/$6 it’s the cheapest of the three by a wide margin — about $0.09 on a typical task versus ~$0.28–0.30 for the frontier pair.

The Smart Play: Route, Don’t Pick

Most production teams don’t choose one. They default to the cheap model (Grok 4.5) for the 80% of requests that are easy, then escalate to Opus 5 or GPT-5.6 Sol on retries, complex refactors, or low-confidence outputs. That keeps the average cost near Grok’s while preserving frontier quality where it matters.

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