$ cat wiki/models/grok-4-6.md
Grok 4.6
Compared with
- Qwen 3.8 27B
- DeepSeek V4-Pro-0813
- Gemini 3.7 Flash
- Muse Glimmer
- Claude Opus 5
- Laguna S 2.1
- Kimi K3
- Inkling
- GPT-5.6 Sol
- LongCat-2.0
- GLM-5.2
- MiniMax M3
- Muse Spark 1.2
- Qwen 3.8 Max
- DeepSeek V4-Flash
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
- Gemini 3.6 Flash
- DeepSeek V4
- Grok 4.5
- Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Fable 5
- Claude Opus 4.8
- Gemini 3.5 Flash
- Grok Build
- Claude Opus 4.7
- Muse Spark
Spec
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Developer | xAI |
| Released | 2026-08-07 (reported) — see ## Conflicting Reports, a second reported date of 2026-08-12 |
| Announced | 2026-07-18 |
| Context window | 500,000 tokens |
| Pricing | $2/M input · $6/M output; a request reaching 200K tokens re-prices in full at $4.00/M input · $1.00/M cached input · $12.00/M output |
| License | proprietary |
| Availability | API |
**Three rows moved off unknown on 2026-08-16, and none of them from a | |
first-party page.** Context window, Pricing and Availability were still | |
unknown nine days after launch — recorded then as the finding rather than as a | |
| gap in research. What changed is that the same specification now appears | |
| consistently across several independent documentation write-ups, where on | |
| 2026-08-07 it appeared in none | |
| (source). **Still no xAI | |
| model card, pricing page or launch post has been read from this environment**, so | |
| every value above is third-party and the underlying observation stands. |
Availability is written as API on the narrowest thing the sources support — a
published per-token rate card implies an API. No source read enumerates the
surfaces (app, Cursor, X integration), so none are listed.
The 200K threshold is a cliff, not a tier: coverage states the entire request re-prices once it crosses, so the marginal cost of the 200,001st token is the difference applied to every token before it (source).
Release Date
- Released: 2026-08-07, as reported — one day ahead of the ~August 8 target
Musk gave on July 25, and matching the "likely next week" of August 4. No
first-party xAI page was read from this environment, so the date is carried on
third-party reporting (source).
Contested: four write-ups read on 2026-08-16 give 2026-08-12 instead — see
## Conflicting Reports - Announced: July 18, 2026 (Elon Musk on X)
- Pre-training: expected to complete week of July 20, 2026 (Musk on X); as of July 23 xAI has not publicly confirmed completion, but the timeline implies pre-training is done or nearly done
- Current phase (as of 2026-07-23): likely in post-training — RL fine-tuning, RLHF, safety evaluations; no public update from xAI
- Launch: ~August 8, 2026; Musk stated on X (Jul 25) that 4.6 is "~2 weeks" out → ~Aug 8. Simultaneously confirmed Grok 4.7 (~4 weeks, ~Aug 22) — the first public confirmation of 4.7 as a distinct model. (source)
Benchmarks
Still no vendor benchmark table. Two figures circulate in launch coverage, both attributed to xAI by the outlet rather than sourced to an xAI page (source):
| Measure | Reported | Comparison as reported |
|---|---|---|
| SWE Marathon | 29.0% | Claude Opus 4.8 26.0% |
| Throughput | 80 transactions/second | — |
| Per Eval Harness Configuration, a single-outlet figure with no harness | ||
| description and no vendor page behind it is recorded and not compared against this | ||
| wiki's other benchmark tables. Neither figure reappeared in anything read on | ||
| 2026-08-16 (source). |
First independent measurement — 2026-08-16
Grok 4.6 is absent from the 2026-08-09 Artificial Analysis snapshot and present in the 2026-08-16 one, which makes this the first independently produced figure for it that this repo holds (source):
| Model | Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index | Context Window | Cost per Task USD | Creator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grok 4.6 (high) | 61 | 500k | $0.84 | SpaceXAI |
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index is that publisher's composite of their | ||||
own benchmark suite, not an accuracy, and Cost per Task USD is their measured | ||||
cost of one task, not a per-token price. Creator reads SpaceXAI because that | ||||
| is the value in their table; this wiki files the model under xAI. |
Read against the same snapshot, 61 places it level with GPT-5.6 Sol (max) and Claude Opus 5 (high), one point behind Claude Fable 5 (with fallback) at 62, and two behind Claude Opus 5 (max/xhigh) at 63 — at $0.84 per task against Opus 5 (max)'s $2.34 and Fable 5's $3.14 (source). Its own predecessor Grok 4.5 sits at 56 for $0.36.
This is one measurement, not a benchmark table. It is a composite from a single vendor of evaluations, it says nothing about which tasks moved, and it does not substitute for the model card xAI has not published.
Use Cases
Documentation read on 2026-08-16 describes the model as built for long-running agents, agentic coding, and interactive or visual work, taking text and image in and producing text out, with low / medium / high / xhigh reasoning effort levels (source).
That is a positioning statement carried by third parties, not a capability measurement — no task-level evaluation behind any of it was read, and the effort levels mirror the pattern Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Opus 5 already ship.
Compared To
| Model | Developer | Params | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grok 4.5 | xAI | 1.5T | Released 2026-07-08 |
| Grok 4.6 | xAI | 2T announced / 1.5T reported | Released 2026-08-07 (reported) |
| Kimi K3 | Moonshot | 2.8T MoE | Released 2026-07-16 |
| MiniMax M3 Pro | MiniMax | 2.7T (unconfirmed) | Q3 2026 (unconfirmed) |
Conflicting Reports
Parameter count. On 2026-07-18 Musk announced the model as 2 trillion parameters, "33% larger" than Grok 4.5's 1.5T, and this page recorded that figure (source). Launch coverage on 2026-08-07 instead describes 1.5T on the same "V9" foundation as Grok 4.5, with the gains coming from improved supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning rather than scale (source).
No source read here reconciles the two, and they are different claims about what the release is — a larger model, or the same model post-trained harder. Under the source-priority rule the vendor statement outranks third-party reporting, so the Compared To table keeps both figures rather than replacing Musk's with an outlet's. This resolves the moment xAI publishes a model card. Nothing read on 2026-08-16 states a parameter count at all, so this conflict is untouched by that capture (source).
Release date. This page has carried 2026-08-07 since 2026-08-08, from launch coverage dated that day (source). Four separate documentation write-ups read on 2026-08-16 date the release to 2026-08-12 (source).
Both sides are third-party, so the source-priority rule does not separate them,
and no first-party xAI page is reachable from this environment to settle it. The
Released row keeps 2026-08-07 — it is the earlier claim, it is what this
page has published for eight days, and replacing a dated claim with a later one
of equal standing would be a silent correction of the kind
Qwen 3.8 27B exists to warn against. The 08-12 date is recorded here
instead. Note that the model's absence from the 2026-08-09 Artificial Analysis
snapshot is consistent with either date and settles neither.
Sources
- Elon Musk on X (July 18, 2026) → (source)
- Grok 4.6 reported launch, 2026-08-07 — third-party only; no first-party page read
- Grok 4.6 specification as reported, read 2026-08-16 — context window, pricing, modalities, effort levels and a second release date; third-party only
- Artificial Analysis leaderboard, 2026-08-16 — first independent measurement held here
- Dataconomy: https://dataconomy.com/2026/07/20/musk-xai-grok-4-6-2t-model-training-next-week/
- WION News: https://www.wionews.com/world/musk-s-answer-to-china-s-ai-monster-2-trillion-parameter-grok-4-6
- Kie.ai: https://kie.ai/blog/what-is-grok-4-6
Key Facts (as of announcement)
- Parameter count: 2 trillion (vs. Grok 4.5's 1.5T — 33% larger)
- Performance claim: "better than [Grok 4.5] in every way" (Musk, unverified)
- Speed target: "keeping speed and token efficiency close" to Grok 4.5
- Motivation: Musk framed it as a direct response to Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 (2.8T MoE, announced July 16, 2026)
- Monthly cadence: consistent with xAI's June 28 announcement of monthly releases for the remainder of 2026
⚠️ No benchmarks, pricing, context window, or official launch date have been published. Treat performance claims as pre-release promotional statements until verified against third-party evals.
Written at announcement. Partly overtaken on 2026-08-16: a pricing table and
a 500K context window are now documented by several third parties, and Artificial
Analysis supplies one independent index figure — see ## Spec and
## Benchmarks. Still standing: no xAI model card, no vendor benchmark table,
no parameter count, and now two competing release dates. The warning was about
first-party silence, and xAI has not broken it.