{"slug": "grok-4-5-uses-4-2x-fewer-tokens-and-costs-17x-less-than-opus-4-8", "title": "Grok 4.5 Uses 4.2x Fewer Tokens and Costs 17x Less Than Opus 4.8", "summary": "SpaceXAI and Cursor released Grok 4.5 on July 8, 2026, which uses 4.2 times fewer tokens and costs 17 times less than Claude Opus 4.8 on SWE-Bench Pro, solving tasks for $0.096 versus $1.68. The model ranks fourth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index but is notable for its economic efficiency rather than raw performance.", "body_md": "Member-only story\n\n# Grok 4.5 Uses 4.2x Fewer Tokens and Costs 17x Less Than Opus 4.8\n\nGrok 4.5 is the fourth-smartest model in the world, and that is not the interesting number. On Artificial Analysis’s independent [Intelligence Index](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/grok-4-5) it scores 54 and lands fourth, behind Fable 5, GPT-5.5, and Claude Opus 4.8. It wins exactly two of the four benchmarks SpaceXAI chose to publish about it. By the usual way we rank these things, it is a very good model that is not the best at anything.\n\nHere is the number that matters. On SWE-Bench Pro, xAI reports Grok 4.5 resolves a task using an average of **15,954 output tokens**. Opus 4.8, on the same benchmark at its maximum setting, burns **67,020**. That is 4.2 times fewer tokens for a task both models can solve. Now put the price beside it: Grok 4.5 charges $6 per million output tokens, Opus 4.8 charges $25. Multiply it out and the same solved task costs about $0.096 of output on Grok and $1.68 on Opus. Seventeen times cheaper. Not because Grok is smarter. Because it shuts up sooner.\n\nThat is the whole story of the model that SpaceXAI and Cursor shipped on 8 July 2026, and it is a story about economics, not leaderboards.\n\n## Key takeaways\n\n**Grok 4.5** launched 8 July 2026, the first model co-trained by SpaceXAI (the merged SpaceX and xAI) and Cursor after SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent…", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-uses-4-2x-fewer-tokens-and-costs-17x-less-than-opus-4-8", "canonical_source": "https://pub.towardsai.net/grok-4-5-uses-4-2x-fewer-tokens-and-costs-17x-less-than-opus-4-8-6211d38806a2?source=rss----98111c9905da---4", "published_at": "2026-07-12 20:01:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-12 20:10:19.960913+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["large-language-models", "ai-products", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["SpaceXAI", "Cursor", "Grok 4.5", "Claude Opus 4.8", "Artificial Analysis", "Fable 5", "GPT-5.5"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-uses-4-2x-fewer-tokens-and-costs-17x-less-than-opus-4-8", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-uses-4-2x-fewer-tokens-and-costs-17x-less-than-opus-4-8.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-uses-4-2x-fewer-tokens-and-costs-17x-less-than-opus-4-8.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-uses-4-2x-fewer-tokens-and-costs-17x-less-than-opus-4-8.jsonld"}}