AI Model Release Tracker - Timeline of Major AI Models from 2022-2026

Home/Compare/Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Grok‑1

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Grok‑1

2 vs 0 benchmarks won

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 4.6
xAI
Grok‑1
Overview
CompanyAnthropicxAI
Release dateFeb 17 2026Nov 3 2023
Model type
Open sourceNoYes
Specifications
Parameters
Context window
Benchmarks
Science reasoning
GPQA Diamond
89.9%
Software engineering
SWE-Bench Verified
79.6%
Multimodal understanding
MMMU
Timeline
Release gapGrok‑1 shipped 837 days before Claude Sonnet 4.6

Which is better: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Grok‑1?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads Grok‑1 on 2 of the tracked benchmarks (GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, MMMU). Grok‑1 shipped 837 days before Claude Sonnet 4.6, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

Grok‑1 is an open-source / open-weight model; Claude Sonnet 4.6 is proprietary.

Direct benchmark comparisons are unavailable — at least one of these models has not published scores on GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, or MMMU.

Frequently asked questions

When was Claude Sonnet 4.6 released?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 was released by Anthropic on Feb 17 2026.
When was Grok‑1 released?
Grok‑1 was released by xAI on Nov 3 2023.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Grok‑1 open source?
Grok‑1 is an open-source / open-weight model released by xAI. Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a proprietary model released by Anthropic.

Other comparisons