Grok 4.20 vs Beam 1.0 501B A23B
Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs 2.3x less per output token than Grok 4.20 ($1.10 vs $2.50 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 2 benchmarks have a result for both.
Grok 4.20 or Beam 1.0 501B A23B: which to pick
Only Grok 4.20 has a coding score, 33.3 on the Vibe Coding Index; Beam 1.0 501B A23B has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Beam 1.0 501B A23B for output tokens 2.3x cheaper ($1.10 vs $2.50 per million) and work measured by Design Arena: websites or Design Arena: game dev, where it leads.
- Shared results
- 2
- Grok 4.20 only
- 53
- Beam 1.0 501B A23B only
- 26
- Like-for-like categories
- 1 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
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 25.7.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a GPQA Diamond result, 88.6%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a AIME result, 96.5%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has a MMLU Pro result, 86.3%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Beam 1.0 501B A23B
Beam 1.0 501B A23B leads, 1250 against 1229.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Grok 4.20
Grok 4.20 takes 2M tokens against 1.05M.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Beam 1.0 501B A23B
Grok 4.20 $0.0025, Beam 1.0 501B A23B $0.0009 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Grok 4.20 has the number, $0.72.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Grok 4.20 33.3 from 2 benchmarks, Beam 1.0 501B A23B not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Web design, 3.3 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Design Arena: game dev: Grok 4.20 1193 against Beam 1.0 501B A23B 1224, 3.9 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Grok 4.20 $2.50 against Beam 1.0 501B A23B $1.10 per million output tokens, 2.3x apart.
- Context window
- Grok 4.20 takes 2M tokens, Beam 1.0 501B A23B 1.05M.
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 | Grok 4.20 | Bars | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web design | 0 | 2 | ||
| All shared boards | 0 | 2 |
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index13 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | Not measured | 1437 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 84.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 72.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 4.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 0.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 44.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 37.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Terminal-Bench | 57.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| WeirdML | 52.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1473 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1461 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | Not measured | 1443 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | Not measured | 1436 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 26 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 25.7 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.1 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1144 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1054 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1090 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1045 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1089 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | 1180 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 28.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 7.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 13.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 11.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 93.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $4,663 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 29 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 88.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 83.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 91.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 34.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 89.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 65.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1442 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1447 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1451 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 75.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index3 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | 96.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1459 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1475 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 86.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 77.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 54.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 63.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 74.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 45.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | 94.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 32.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1430 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1376 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1433 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1430 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1229 | 1250 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1200 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1193 | 1224 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1217 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1193 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1221 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1165 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1175 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index21 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 38.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 63.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 39.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| IFBench | 81.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 69.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| DTBench | 90.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LMCA | 38.7% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CL-bench | 22.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| CL-bench Life | 11.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.20 measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1425 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1430 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1390 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1436 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1413 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1424 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1461 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1412 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1414 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1429 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1400 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1399 | Only Beam 1.0 501B A23B measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 25 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.20 | Beam 1.0 501B A23B | 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
Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Beam 1.0 501B A23B 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 | SpaceXAI Grok 4.20 | Reflection Beam 1.0 501B A23B |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | xAI | Reflection |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | March 31, 2026 | October 16, 2026 |
| Context window | 2M | 1.05M |
| Input $/Mtok | $1.25 | $0.35 |
| Output $/Mtok | $2.50 | $1.10 |
| Coding index | 33.3 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 1 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.72 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Grok 4.20 better than Beam 1.0 501B A23B for coding?
Only Grok 4.20 has a coding score, 33.3 on the Vibe Coding Index; Beam 1.0 501B A23B has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Beam 1.0 501B A23B for output tokens 2.3x cheaper ($1.10 vs $2.50 per million) and work measured by Design Arena: websites or Design Arena: game dev, where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Grok 4.20 or Beam 1.0 501B A23B?
Grok 4.20 costs $1.25 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs $0.35 and $1.10. Cost per solved task is known for Grok 4.20 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Grok 4.20 or Beam 1.0 501B A23B?
Grok 4.20, with 2M tokens against 1.05M.
How many benchmarks is the Grok 4.20 vs Beam 1.0 501B A23B comparison based on?
2 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Grok 4.20's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Beam 1.0 501B A23B's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.