At a glance
| Provider | xAI |
|---|---|
| Released | 2025-02 |
| Tier | general-purpose |
| License | Closed / proprietary |
| Modalities | text, image |
| Context window | 1M tokens |
| Max output | 8.192k tokens |
| API price · input | $3.00 / 1M tokens |
| API price · output | $15.00 / 1M tokens |
Benchmark performance
How Grok 3 stacks up against the current leader (GPT-5) and the median model in the leaderboard:
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | GPT-5 | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chatbot Arena Elo | 1402 | 1410 | 1320 |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.9 | 86.8 | 78.0 |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.4 | 87.3 | 65.0 |
| MATH | 89.3 | 96.7 | 78.3 |
| HumanEval | 86.5 | 95.1 | 92.0 |
| SWE-Bench Verified | N/A | 74.9 | 49.0 |
Numbers compiled from provider technical reports and Chatbot Arena. See methodology for the composite-score formula.
OpenRouter routes your requests across Grok 3, GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, and 100+ other models behind a single API key — pay-as-you-go, no monthly minimum. Try OpenRouter → (affiliate · supports this site)
What does Grok 3 cost in practice?
API pricing is $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens. Assuming a 50/50 input/output split, here is what that looks like at three workload sizes:
| Volume | Per day | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens/day | $9.00 | $270.00 | $3,285 |
| 10M tokens/day | $90.00 | $2,700 | $32,850 |
| 100M tokens/day | $900.00 | $27,000 | $328,500 |
Strengths & weaknesses
Where it shines
- Arena: 1402 (rank #2 of 27, top tier)
- GPQA: 75.4 (rank #7 of 29, above average)
Where it lags
- HumanEval: 86.5 (rank #26 of 30, below average)
Best alternatives
The closest models to Grok 3 by tier and benchmark score:
| Model | Score | $ in / out | Context | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 4 Anthropic |
80.7 | $3.00 / $15.00 | 200k | Try → · vs Grok |
| Claude 3.7 Sonnet Anthropic |
76.0 | $3.00 / $15.00 | 200k | Try → · vs Grok |
| GPT-4.1 OpenAI |
74.5 | $2.00 / $8.00 | 1M | Try → · vs Grok |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet Anthropic |
69.1 | $3.00 / $15.00 | 200k | Try → · vs Grok |
| Gemini 1.5 Pro |
67.9 | $1.25 / $5.00 | 2M | Try → · vs Grok |
Frequently asked questions
Is Grok 3 a good model?
Grok 3 scores 81.7 on the llmrank.top composite (rank #5 of 30). It is in the top tier (the leader, GPT-5, scores 86.0). Whether it's the right fit depends on your workload — see the use-case discussion on this page.
How much does Grok 3 cost?
Grok 3 is priced at $3.00 per 1M input tokens and $15.00 per 1M output tokens (USD). For a 10M-token-per-day workload split 50/50, that works out to roughly $90.00/day or $32,850/year.
What is Grok 3's context window?
1M tokens. That is large enough to ingest entire codebases or full books in one prompt.
Is Grok 3 open source?
No — it is a closed (proprietary) model accessed only via the provider API.
What is Grok 3's SWE-Bench score?
Grok 3 scores not reported on SWE-Bench Verified — the benchmark that measures real-world GitHub issue resolution. Its Chatbot Arena Elo is 1402.
What are the best alternatives to Grok 3?
Closest alternatives by tier and score: Claude Sonnet 4, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, GPT-4.1. See the alternatives section on this page for side-by-side numbers.
Related: Claude Sonnet 4 · Claude 3.7 Sonnet · GPT-4.1 · Full leaderboard
Spotted out-of-date numbers? Open an issue — corrections usually ship within 24h.
Try Grok 3 now
Direct link to the official playground — or use OpenRouter to A/B test it against any other model on a single API key.