Back to the index
39FrontierProvisional score
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5
Strong and unusually direct, but two releases behind xAI's current Grok.
Updated
Grok 4.5
The read
Grok 4.5 was xAI's flagship in the summer, and it still reasons well, answers quickly and is less prone than its rivals to refusing a reasonable request. xAI has since shipped 4.6 and 4.7, and the newer model is both stronger on benchmarks and cheaper on output. It remains on the API for anyone whose work was tuned against it.
Where it shines
- Answers directly instead of hedging
- Fast for a model at this quality level
- Live access to public posts, which no rival ships natively
Worth knowing first
- Superseded twice since July, most recently by Grok 4.7
- Smaller ecosystem of adapters and community tooling
Index score
81.3
Provisional. This score is read from the product's public capability, not from the one-prompt rebuild the fully reviewed entries went through, so treat it as a placing rather than a verdict.
Craft81
Speed82
Control86
Value78
- Rank
- 39 of 73
- Builds
- LLMs
- Category
- Frontier
- Output
- Text, code and images in, text out
- Pricing
- Paid only
- Best for
- Existing work where over-cautious refusals were the real cost
Scores are our own editorial judgement, weighted craft 55, speed 10, control 15 and value 20.
Compare it with
Also worth a look
Full index- 01Claude Opus 5.5Claude Opus 5.5ProvisionalFable-level answers for less than the Opus it replaces. The new default.Frontier modelPaid only92.8
- 03Gemini 4 ArgonGemini 4 ArgonProvisionalTop of the human-preference leaderboard, and almost nobody can use it yet.Frontier modelPaid only90.6
- 04GPT-6.1 SolGPT-6.1 SolProvisionalNear-Astra answers at a fifth of the price. The OpenAI model most teams should deploy now.Frontier modelPaid only90.3
