Claude Fable 5 vs Grok 4.20
Claude Fable 5 leads Grok 4.20 on coding, 79.3 to 33.3 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Grok 4.20 costs 20.0x less per output token ($2.50 vs $50.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 49 benchmarks have a result for both.
Claude Fable 5 or Grok 4.20: which to pick
Pick Claude Fable 5 for coding: it scores 79.3 on the Vibe Coding Index against 33.3 for Grok 4.20.
Pick Grok 4.20 for output tokens 20.0x cheaper ($2.50 vs $50.00 per million) and a lower cost per solved task ($0.72 against $2.16).
- Shared results
- 49
- Claude Fable 5 only
- 78
- Grok 4.20 only
- 6
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
Claude Fable 5
Claude Fable 5 scores 79.3 against 33.3.
6 and 2 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Claude Fable 5
Claude Fable 5 leads, 49.6 against 25.7.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Claude Fable 5 has a AA Agentic Index result, 50.7.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
Claude Fable 5
Claude Fable 5 leads, 93.2% against 88.6%.
Same board, both measured
Math
AIME
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a AIME result, 96.5%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
Claude Fable 5
Claude Fable 5 leads, 91.5% against 86.3%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Claude Fable 5
Claude Fable 5 leads, 1296 against 1229.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Grok 4.20
Grok 4.20 takes 2M tokens against 1M.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Grok 4.20
Claude Fable 5 $0.035, Grok 4.20 $0.0025 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
Grok 4.20
Claude Fable 5 $2.16, Grok 4.20 $0.72.
Published attempt cost and pass rate
At a glance
- Coding index
- Claude Fable 5 79.3 from 6 benchmarks, Grok 4.20 33.3 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Coding, 38.6 points apart on average over 7 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): Claude Fable 5 90.3% against Grok 4.20 4.1%, 86.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Claude Fable 5 $50.00 against Grok 4.20 $2.50 per million output tokens, 20.0x apart.
- Context window
- Claude Fable 5 takes 1M tokens, Grok 4.20 2M.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Claude Fable 5 | Bars | Grok 4.20 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 7 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 2 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 12 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 7 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 6 | 0 | ||
| Web design | 8 | 0 | ||
| General | 6 | 1 | ||
| All shared boards | 48 | 1 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index70
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 98.3% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1624 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| AA Coding Index | 76.5 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 89.8% | 84.3% | Claude Fable 5 |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 95.0% | 72.2% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 41.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 90.3% | 4.1% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 55.1% | 0.3% | Claude Fable 5 |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 2.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 80.5% | 44.2% | Claude Fable 5 |
| SciCode | 61.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 62.9% | 37.9% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Terminal-Bench | Not measured | 57.3% | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| FrontierCode | 53.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| FrontierSWE | 47.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| GSO-Bench | 78.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| WeirdML | 91.9% | 52.3% | Claude Fable 5 |
| MirrorCode | 63.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 2041.3 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1518 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1513 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1631 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1651 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1623 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 49.6 | 25.7 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 163.4 | 152.1 | Claude Fable 5 |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index120
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 50.7 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1261 | 1144 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1280 | 1054 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1264 | 1090 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1283 | 1052 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1292 | 1089 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1285 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | 1277 | 1180 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | 1295 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LiveBench research | 86.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LiveBench browser | 92.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 53.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 56.3% | 28.5% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 38.3% | 7.0% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 49.5% | 13.9% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 73.7% | 11.7% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | 15.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 98.5% | 93.0% | Claude Fable 5 |
| APEX-Agents | 63.6% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Remote Labor Index | 16.1% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| PostTrainBench | 41.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $5,680 | $4,663 | Claude Fable 5 |
| LMArena Search | 1229 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 18 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index70
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 93.2% | 88.6% | Claude Fable 5 |
| LiveBench reasoning | 89.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 89.3% | 83.5% | Claude Fable 5 |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 92.6% | 91.1% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 55.5% | 34.5% | Claude Fable 5 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 85.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 98.5% | 89.5% | Claude Fable 5 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 89.2% | 65.1% | Claude Fable 5 |
| SimpleBench | 81.9% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 47.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 52.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| EBR-bench | 39.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1507 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1534 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1509 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1357 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1361 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 91.4% | 75.0% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 96.5% | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 100.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 87.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 90.2% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| ProofBench | 95.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1516 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1515 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index60
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 91.5% | 86.3% | Claude Fable 5 |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 88.6% | 77.7% | Claude Fable 5 |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | Not measured | 54.4% | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 71.8% | 63.7% | Claude Fable 5 |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 76.9% | 74.1% | Claude Fable 5 |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 68.9% | 45.4% | Claude Fable 5 |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | Not measured | 94.5% | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 56.1% | 32.2% | Claude Fable 5 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 70.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1506 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1480 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1498 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1480 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index80
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1296 | 1229 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1319 | 1199 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1335 | 1192 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1304 | 1217 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1319 | 1193 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1310 | 1221 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1302 | 1164 | Claude Fable 5 |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1329 | 1174 | Claude Fable 5 |
| LiveBench design | 84.7% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index61
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | 80.5% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 70.4% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 51.9% | 38.2% | Claude Fable 5 |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 88.5% | 63.4% | Claude Fable 5 |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 74.2% | 39.1% | Claude Fable 5 |
| IFBench | 63.5% | 81.2% | Grok 4.20 |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 82.3% | 69.0% | Claude Fable 5 |
| DTBench | 98.4% | 90.1% | Claude Fable 5 |
| LMCA | 61.2% | 38.7% | Claude Fable 5 |
| CL-bench | Not measured | 22.2% | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 95.0% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Furniture assembly | 35.8% | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| CL-bench Life | Not measured | 11.9% | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1491 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1502 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1494 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1325 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1498 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1482 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1543 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1486 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1504 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1487 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1505 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1498 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1503 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1494 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1504 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1510 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1501 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1482 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1323 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1373 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1337 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1341 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1338 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| LMArena Document | 1496 | Not measured | Only Claude Fable 5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Claude Fable 5 | Grok 4.20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Grok 4.20 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Grok 4.20 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Grok 4.20 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Anthropic Claude Fable 5 | SpaceXAI Grok 4.20 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Anthropic | xAI |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | June 9, 2026 | March 31, 2026 |
| Context window | 1M | 2M |
| Input $/Mtok | $10.00 | $1.25 |
| Output $/Mtok | $50.00 | $2.50 |
| Coding index | 79.3 | 33.3 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 6 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | $2.16 | $0.72 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Claude Fable 5 better than Grok 4.20 for coding?
Pick Claude Fable 5 for coding: it scores 79.3 on the Vibe Coding Index against 33.3 for Grok 4.20. Pick Grok 4.20 for output tokens 20.0x cheaper ($2.50 vs $50.00 per million) and a lower cost per solved task ($0.72 against $2.16).
Which is cheaper, Claude Fable 5 or Grok 4.20?
Claude Fable 5 costs $10.00 per million input tokens and $50.00 per million output tokens; Grok 4.20 costs $1.25 and $2.50. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Claude Fable 5 costs $2.16 and Grok 4.20 $0.72.
Which has the bigger context window, Claude Fable 5 or Grok 4.20?
Grok 4.20, with 2M tokens against 1M.
How many benchmarks is the Claude Fable 5 vs Grok 4.20 comparison based on?
49 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Claude Fable 5's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Grok 4.20's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.