Is Grok 4.3 a good deal?

Whether anything in this catalogue beats Grok 4.3 on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.

12 undominated of 144 · Oct 16, 2026

As of Oct 16, 2026, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores higher and costs less than Grok 4.3 for Balanced on LMArena, but it is not a drop-in. You would give up: max output, file.

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Current model

Grok 4.3

Balanced

3 tokens in per 1 out

MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 93.5 points higher and costs 65% less, but you would give up: max output, file.

Grok 4.3

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1396.8

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$1.56/M

MiMo-V2.6-Pro

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1490.3

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$0.540/M

Grok 4.3 takes text, image, file, returns up to 900,000 tokens from a 1,000,000-token context, and is listed by 4 sellers.

Compared against 144 rated, priced models on this lens: nothing dominates it outright, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Grok 4.3 scores 1396.8 at $1.56 per million tokens for this mix.

Higher score, lower price, named losses

Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.

ModelLMArenaEffective $/MYou give up
MiMo-V2.6-Pro1490.3$0.540/Mmax output, file
Gemini 3.6 Flash1479.5$1.50/Mmax output
GLM 5.31471.4$1.00/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026image, file
GLM 5.3 Flash1471.0$0.238/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026max output, file
GLM 5.21470.0$1.12/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026image, file
Grok 4.31396.8 · $1.56/MLMArena EloEffective $/M · Balanced
144 rated, priced standard models. Chartreuse is the frontier. Cobalt is the model you named, when it is not on the staircase.

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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.

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