Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs Grok 3: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Grok 3 on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Grok 3 has the stronger average benchmark score; Grok 3 is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is a multimodal model from Anthropic. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $14.91 per million input tokens and $74.27 per million output tokens, and averages 81.6 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.91 / 1M
- Output
- $74.27 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 81.6
- Open weights
- No
Grok 3
Grok 3 is a multimodal model from xAI. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $15.84 per million input tokens and $70.31 per million output tokens, and averages 82.8 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $15.84 / 1M
- Output
- $70.31 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 82.8
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude 3.7 Sonnet | Grok 3 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.91 | $15.84 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $74.27 | $70.31 | B |
| Context window | 200,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 128,000 | 4,096 | A |
| Average score | 81.6 | 82.8 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1451.9 | 1447.2 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 7, Grok 3 wins 5, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude 3.7 Sonnet | Grok 3 | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 83.5 | 81.9 | 1.6 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| GPQA Diamond | 80.2 | 80.0 | 0.2 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| SWE-bench Verified | 70.1 | 72.6 | 2.5 | Grok 3 |
| HumanEval | 85.7 | 85.3 | 0.4 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| MATH-500 | 88.9 | 88.7 | 0.2 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| AIME 2025 | 81.2 | 81.1 | 0.1 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| LiveCodeBench | 75.0 | 74.3 | 0.7 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| IFEval | 88.5 | 91.0 | 2.5 | Grok 3 |
| TruthfulQA | 81.7 | 85.4 | 3.7 | Grok 3 |
| HellaSwag | 87.6 | 91.4 | 3.8 | Grok 3 |
| MMMU | 75.5 | 79.1 | 3.6 | Grok 3 |
| Arena Elo | 1451.9 | 1447.2 | 4.7 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude 3.7 Sonnet costs about $29.75 per million tokens and Grok 3 costs about $29.46. Grok 3 is roughly 1% cheaper than Claude 3.7 Sonnet. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for Grok 3. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 7, Grok 3 wins 5, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Grok 3 leads Claude 3.7 Sonnet by 1.2 points (82.8 versus 81.6).
The price picture favours Grok 3. The context picture favours Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Grok 3 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude 3.7 Sonnet if
- You need the larger 200,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 128,000-token output limit.
Choose Grok 3 if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- The workload needs multi-step reasoning.
FAQ
Is Claude 3.7 Sonnet better than Grok 3?
On the index average, Grok 3 leads Claude 3.7 Sonnet by 1.2 points (82.8 versus 81.6). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 7 benchmarks, Grok 3 wins 5.
Which is cheaper, Claude 3.7 Sonnet or Grok 3?
Grok 3 is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $29.46 per million tokens, versus $29.75 for Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens. Grok 3 has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is proprietary; Grok 3 is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Grok 3 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.