Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k vs Grok 4.20
Claude Sonnet 5 at $2.30 in and $11.50 out, GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k at $3.45 in and $4.60 out, and Grok 4.20 at $1.44 in and $2.88 out — per million tokens, from the same wallet.
Claude Sonnet 5
Anthropic
2.1¢
for a client proposal
$2.30 in · $11.50 out / 1M
1M context · released 1 month ago
GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k
OpenAI
2.1¢
for a client proposal
$3.45 in · $4.60 out / 1M
16K context · released August 2023
Grok 4.20
xAI
0.95¢
for a client proposal
$1.44 in · $2.88 out / 1M
2M context · released 4 months ago
Asking all three at once — identical prompt, identical context — costs about $0.05 for a typical client proposal.
At a glance
- Cheapest input: Grok 4.20 at $1.44 per million tokens.
- Cheapest output: Grok 4.20 at $2.88 per million tokens.
- Largest context: Grok 4.20 at 2M tokens — about 2,900 pages.
Cost per task
Estimated totals at the rates above. Solid bar is input, lighter bar is output.
Quick code fix
2K in · 500 outDraft a client proposal from notes
5K in · 800 outContext-heavy session (Alyph workspace)
155K in · 4K outAnalyze a 50-page legal contract
35K in · 1K outLarge architecture refactor
250K in · 3K outLong-context rate applied at this input size.
Solid part of each bar is input tokens, the lighter part is output. Models that don’t fit a task are marked instead of priced.
Cost vs Token Amount
Drag the slider to adjust the split between input and output workload.
Adjust the ratio slider to change how output tokens influence the final price for equivalent workloads.
Pricing
Specs
Try it with real numbers
2K tokens in · 500 tokens out.
All 3, same prompt and context: 2.4¢. That is the entire cost of the comparison.
Your $5 welcome credit covers about 209 of these.
Which should you pick?
For long documents, Grok 4.20 has the largest context window here — 2M tokens.
On price, Grok 4.20 is the cheapest of the three on a typical task, at about 0.95¢.
For images or files, Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.20 can read them directly; GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k is text-only.
If you want to watch the model think, Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.20 show reasoning; the other answers directly.
Or don’t pick. Send the identical prompt to all three, read the answers side by side, and keep the winner. How to run a fair bake-off →
Questions, answered
Which is cheapest — Claude Sonnet 5, GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k, or Grok 4.20?
Which has the largest context window?
Can I run Claude Sonnet 5, GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k, and Grok 4.20 side by side on Alyph?
Ask all three at once
Identical prompt, identical context, answers side by side — about $0.05 for a typical client proposal. Free to start, with $5 of credit.