Grok 4.5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Updated October 21, 2026. 76 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Pick Grok 4.5 for coding: it scores 75.5 on the Vibe Coding Index against 37.4 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
Pick Qwen3.6 Plus when output tokens cost 3.1x less, or when the context window is larger, 1M against 500K tokens.
- Shared results
- 76
- Grok 4.5 only
- 44
- Qwen3.6 Plus only
- 7
- Like-for-like categories
- 8 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
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, four public coding benchmarks
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 scores 75.5 against 37.4.
2 and 1 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 leads, 38.8 against 27.0.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Grok 4.5 has a AA Agentic Index result, 41.2.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 leads, 92.9% against 87.4%.
Same board, both measured
Math
AIME
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a AIME result, 94.6%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 leads, 89.2% against 87.7%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 leads, 1281 against 1243.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus takes 1M tokens against 500K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3.6 Plus
Grok 4.5 $0.0050, Qwen3.6 Plus $0.0013 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
Grok 4.5
Grok 4.5 $0.62, Qwen3.6 Plus $1.19.
Published attempt cost and pass rate
At a glance
- Coding index
- Grok 4.5 75.5 from 2 benchmarks, Qwen3.6 Plus 37.4 from 1 benchmark.
- Widest category
- Agentic work, 15.1 points apart on average over 5 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): Grok 4.5 69.0% against Qwen3.6 Plus 25.6%, 43.4 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Grok 4.5 $6.00 against Qwen3.6 Plus $1.95 per million output tokens, 3.1x apart.
- Context window
- Grok 4.5 takes 500K tokens, Qwen3.6 Plus 1M.
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 4.5 | Bars | Qwen3.6 Plus | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 13 | 0 | 1 tie | |
| Intelligence | 2 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 4 | 1 | ||
| Reasoning | 8 | 1 | ||
| Math | 4 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 8 | 3 | ||
| Web design | 8 | 0 | ||
| General | 20 | 3 | ||
| All shared boards | 67 | 8 | 1 tie |
CodingLike-for-likeFour of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index130
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 94.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1553 | 1461 | Grok 4.5 |
| AA Coding Index | 72.4 | 54.5 | Grok 4.5 |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 87.3% | 86.0% | Grok 4.5 |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 86.6% | 73.4% | Grok 4.5 |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 8.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 69.0% | 25.6% | Grok 4.5 |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 36.6% | 11.1% | Grok 4.5 |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | 0.0% | Tie |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 40.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 67.8% | 53.2% | Grok 4.5 |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | 66.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | 71.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SciCode | 55.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 43.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| FrontierCode | 42.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| WeirdML | 46.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 1309.3 | 670.1 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1474 | 1467 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1471 | 1462 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1556 | 1454 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1567 | 1463 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1562 | 1472 | Grok 4.5 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 38.8 | 27.0 | Grok 4.5 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 154.1 | 147.3 | Grok 4.5 |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index41
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 41.2 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1217 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1249 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1221 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1242 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1229 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1235 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | 1204 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | 1232 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench research | 85.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench browser | 44.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 27.9% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SREBench (Vals AI) | 0.8% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 48.4% | 40.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 24.9% | 7.7% | Grok 4.5 |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 38.0% | 14.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 52.9% | 32.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| Time Horizon Index (Vals AI) | 6.3% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | Not measured | 97.7% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| APEX-Agents | 56.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| PostTrainBench | 23.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $3,887 | $5,115 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LMArena Search | 1216 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 16 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index81
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 92.9% | 87.4% | Grok 4.5 |
| LiveBench reasoning | 87.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 61.8% | 84.2% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 93.1% | 88.2% | Grok 4.5 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 42.7% | 27.8% | Grok 4.5 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 93.4% | 88.4% | Grok 4.5 |
| ARC-AGI | 87.2% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 52.6% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SimpleBench | 70.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 35.0% | 14.0% | Grok 4.5 |
| Mystery game puzzles | Not measured | 12.0% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1462 | 1448 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1465 | 1454 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1464 | 1455 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1304 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1295 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index40
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 94.6% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 97.8% | 93.3% | Grok 4.5 |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 57.2% | 38.2% | Grok 4.5 |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 24.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| ProofBench | 31.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1460 | 1449 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1482 | 1448 | Grok 4.5 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 6 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index83
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 89.2% | 87.7% | Grok 4.5 |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 86.0% | 84.2% | Grok 4.5 |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | Not measured | 51.5% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 67.4% | 61.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 71.7% | 74.7% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 61.8% | 68.0% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 43.3% | 36.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 48.3% | 44.1% | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: science | 1464 | 1439 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1440 | 1442 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1463 | 1437 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1441 | 1430 | Grok 4.5 |
| 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 | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1281 | 1243 | Grok 4.5 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1279 | 1233 | Grok 4.5 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1263 | 1211 | Grok 4.5 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1267 | 1228 | Grok 4.5 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1257 | 1202 | Grok 4.5 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1276 | 1236 | Grok 4.5 |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1215 | 1160 | Grok 4.5 |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1257 | 1115 | Grok 4.5 |
| LiveBench design | 78.1% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index203
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | 73.0% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 35.0% | 44.9% | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 86.9% | 77.0% | Grok 4.5 |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 63.4% | 51.5% | Grok 4.5 |
| IFBench | Not measured | 75.2% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 79.3% | 78.3% | Grok 4.5 |
| DTBench | 96.5% | 81.9% | Grok 4.5 |
| LMCA | 45.2% | 33.1% | Grok 4.5 |
| CL-bench | Not measured | 20.3% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 74.4% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Furniture assembly | 22.5% | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1448 | 1436 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1445 | 1424 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1442 | 1404 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Vision | 1287 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1453 | 1445 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1440 | 1424 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1495 | 1477 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: German | 1448 | 1451 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1430 | 1390 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1406 | 1379 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: French | 1457 | 1455 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1451 | 1432 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1449 | 1434 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1432 | 1433 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1456 | 1438 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1462 | 1439 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1445 | 1418 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1434 | 1402 | Grok 4.5 |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1285 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1345 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1293 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1276 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1293 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| LMArena Document | 1452 | Not measured | Only Grok 4.5 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus | 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
Qwen3.6 Plus costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3.6 Plus costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3.6 Plus 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 4.5 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | xAI | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | July 8, 2026 | April 2, 2026 |
| Context window | 500K | 1M |
| Input $/Mtok | $2.00 | $0.325 |
| Output $/Mtok | $6.00 | $1.95 |
| Coding index | 75.5 | 37.4 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 1 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.62 | $1.19 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Grok 4.5 better than Qwen3.6 Plus for coding?
Pick Grok 4.5 for coding: it scores 75.5 on the Vibe Coding Index against 37.4 for Qwen3.6 Plus. Pick Qwen3.6 Plus when output tokens cost 3.1x less, or when the context window is larger, 1M against 500K tokens.
Which is cheaper, Grok 4.5 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Grok 4.5 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $6.00 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus costs $0.325 and $1.95. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Grok 4.5 costs $0.62 and Qwen3.6 Plus $1.19.
Which has the bigger context window, Grok 4.5 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus, with 1M tokens against 500K.
How many benchmarks is the Grok 4.5 vs Qwen3.6 Plus comparison based on?
76 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Grok 4.5's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and Qwen3.6 Plus's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.