GPT 4.5 vs Grok3 vs Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Which one is better?
Latest AI models have been released by X AI, Anthropic, and OpenAI. In this article, we will see what these models excel in, how they compare, and the use cases for each.
In the last 1-2 weeks, we have seen major tech companies release their latest AI models with better reasoning, coding, and mathematical capabilities. AI was moving fast, and now it is moving faster.
I was away for 2 days and logged in to see that X AI had released Grok 3. A few weeks later, Anthropic launched Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and now OpenAI has launched their GPT 4.5 model.
Releases are now happening in a week, and what we can do best as developers is stay up to date with the models, and learn how we can integrate them into our day jobs (or at the least, these can be a fun discussion at parties 😏).
In this article, we will see how these models compare with some popular benchmarks, what kind of tasks each of them excels in, and how we can use them in our daily workflows.
TLDR of what each of the models focuses on;
Grok 3 focuses on advanced reasoning and real-time data analysis.
GPT 4.5 focuses on chat capabilities.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet focuses on coding and frontend development capabilities.
What is Claude 3.7 Sonnet?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet was released by the Anthropic team on 25th Feb 2025, and is considered their most intelligent model to date and the first hybrid reasoning model on the market.
It produces near-instant responses or extended, step-by-step thinking that is made visible to the user.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet was created with the philosophy that since humans can use a single brain for quick responses as well as deep reflections, reasoning should be an integrated capability of frontier models rather than a separate model.
You can see this philosophy when trying out Claude 3.7 yourself.
If you use it normally, you will see that it is just an upgraded version of Claude 3.5, but in extended mode, it self-reflects before answering, which improves its performance on math, physics, instruction-following, coding, and many other tasks.
The image below has been taken from the official Claude announcement, and it shows how Claude 3.7 Sonnet performs in extended and non extended thinking version 👇
Along with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, the Anthropic team also launched Claude Code. It is an agentic coding tool that lives in your terminal, understands your codebase, and helps you code faster through natural language commands.
Use the command below to install it and try it yourself:
`npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code`
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is available on Claude Pro, Team and Enterprise plans, starting at $18.
What is GPT 4.5?
OpenAI launched their best chat model, GPT 4.5 in research preview mode on February 27th, and it is currently only available for Pro users. If you are a Pro user, you can use GPT 4.5 directly in chatgpt.com or through their APIs.
According to users, interacting with GPT-4.5 feels more natural. Its broader knowledge base, improved ability to follow user intent, and greater “EQ” make it useful for tasks like improving writing, programming, and solving practical problems.
So far, OpenAI models have been built on two paradigms: unsupervised learning and reasoning. Models like GPT-3.5, 4, and 4.5 have been built on unsupervised learning, which increases model accuracy and intuition.
Models like o1 and o3-mini have been built on reasoning, teaching models to think and produce a chain of thought before they respond, allowing them to tackle complex STEM or logic problems.
GPT-4.5 is an example of unsupervised learning, with more compute and data, and it is better at understanding natural language.
It is also better at interpreting subtle cues. It also has more creativity and aesthetic understanding and is said to excel at writing and designing.
Btw, earlier, I worked on writing how to code with ChatGPT, and Pieces team made content on how to work with ChatGPT through Pieces, so check it out to stay up to date.
What is Grok 3?
The xAI team launched Grok 3 on February 19th, their most advanced model so far. It is said to have strong reasoning capabilities with extensive pretraining knowledge.
It excels in reasoning, mathematics, coding, world knowledge, and instruction-following tasks. Its reasoning abilities allow it to think for seconds to minutes, correcting errors, exploring alternatives, and delivering accurate answers.
Along with Grok 3, they also released Grok 3 mini, which is more cost efficient.
In the example below, I used Grok 3 in think mode to ask it a deep/philosophical question.
It thought for a few seconds and gave a very personalised response sharing its own takeaways.
You can try Grok 3 for free here, and test it yourself to see how it performs.
GPT 4.5 vs Grok3 vs Claude 3.7 Sonnet
Each of the models excel in certain areas like Claude 3.7 in coding and frontend development, Grok 3 in reasoning and GPT 4.5 in chat capabilities. But when you use these models for individual/professional use, you need to consider more metrics like pricing, accuracy, speed and ideal use-cases.
We will be comparing the models using the following benchmarks:
Graduate Level Reasoning
Math problem solving
Latency & Speed
Accuracy through Massive Multitask Language Understanding
Usage
Pricing
If you want to know more about what these benchmarks mean, you can read this article where we compared Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT 4o.
Graduate-level reasoning:
Claude 3.7 Sonnet has strong reasoning capabilities, especially in complex problem-solving tasks.
Grok 3 excels in advanced reasoning due to its extensive training.
GPT-4.5 has lesser reasoning abilities, compared to Grok 3 and Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
Math problem solving:
Grok 3 leads in math problem-solving, achieving a 93.3% success rate on AIME’24 problems.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet has a 49% success rate on AIME’24 problems.
GPT-4.5 has a 36.7% success rate on AIME’24 problems.
Latency & speed:
Claude 3.7 Sonnet offers high efficiency and can handle a 200k-token context, useful for large documents.
Grok 3 has huge computational backing, allowing high token throughput. It is suitable for real-time applications.
GPT-4.5 has lower throughput compared to Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
Accuracy:
Claude 3.7 Sonnet excels at coding, scoring 70.3% on SWE-Bench Verified benchmarks, and also has great reasoning abilities, scoring 80% on MMLU.
Grok 3 scored around 92.7% on MMLU, showing strong reasoning abilities.
GPT-4.5 scored around 90% on knowledge tests (MMLU), but it is slightly below specialized models on advanced math and coding tasks.
Usage:
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is a general-purpose model, but it excels in coding-related tasks. It is best suited for frontend development. An example can be building a UI generator that converts designs into React components.
Grok 3, because of its high reasoning abilities, is better suited for math and science problems. Using Grok 3, you can build applications like a real-time stock market analysis tool that summarizes financial trends and news instantly.
GPT-4.5 is also a general-purpose model, excelling in chat abilities. Since it also has a higher aesthetic sense, it can be a great fit for design related tasks and more creative work. Since it is more creative, you can use it to build a tool that generates designs using natural language.
Pricing:
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is priced at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, and it can be used by Pro members with a starting price of $18 per month.
Grok 3 is currently free to use for all with certain restrictions. For users who need more, they can subscribe to X Premium+ or SuperGrok plans.
GPT-4.5 costs 25 times more for input tokens and 10 times more for output tokens compared to Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It can currently be used by Pro members starting at $20 per month.
When comparing all the models, what I have found out is:
Claude 3.7 provides excellent cost-effectiveness for coding and extended reasoning, and offers a balanced performance with high efficiency and cost-effectiveness, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.
GPT-4.5 has comparable general-purpose capabilities, with higher cost and lower throughput when compared to Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
Grok 3 stands out in reasoning abilities.
Ending remarks
With the pace at which AI is evolving, there’s a chance that by the time you read this article, there will be a new model or a new tool (which is by the way the part of AI predictions for 2025).
But, what is important for us as developers is learning how we can integrate this into our workflows and make the best use of it. A good way is by using their APIs.
For the models we discussed, Claude 3.7 Sonnet is available through the Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. GPT-4.5 can be accessed via OpenAI’s chat completions API, assistants API, and batch API for developers on all paid usage tiers, while Grok 3 is yet to be released.
Other than using the API, here are some tips that I have, using which you can make the best use of AI:
Use tools that are LLM agnostic – This way, you do not have to be dependent on one LLM and can choose a model of your choice. Examples of LLM agnostic applications can be Pieces. Here’s a helpful article on Why LLM agnostic solutions are the future of dev tools.
Customize as much as you can – Most AI tools are very flexible. You should learn how to make the best use of each of their hero features and make it suit your workflow the most.
Some articles that I would suggest you read:
Everything a dev community should know about using Pieces in Cursor.
Learn how the tech stack you build is compatible with GenAI. There is already a shift in how teams are shipping, with AI integrated at some step or another. What is helpful for us as developers is to learn how it integrates with the technologies we use the most. This blog on What leaders need to know about SLMs, is a great example.
And if you’re looking for a comparison of old models: Claude 3.5 sonnet Vs GPT-4o, you could see here
