Is Grok 4.5 a good deal?

As of Sep 23, 2026, Grok 4.5 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Muse Spark 1.3 scores 39.6 higher and costs 33% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.

Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements

Muse Spark 1.3 is both better and cheaper than Grok 4.5: 39.6 points higher on LMArena and 33% less per million tokens, $1.00 cheaper at this mix.

Grok 4.5 takes text, image, file, returns up to 450,000 tokens from a 500,000-token context, and is listed by 4 sellers.

Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 2 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Grok 4.5 scores 1450.1 at $3.00 per million tokens for this mix.

Envelope-safe replacements

Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.

Model	LMArena	Effective $/M	You save
Muse Spark 1.3	1489.7 +39.6	$2.00/M	33%
Muse Spark 1.1	1480.2 +30.1	$2.00/M	33%

Higher score, lower price, named losses

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

Model	LMArena	Effective $/M	You give up
Gemini 3.8 Flash	1494.7	$1.50/M	max output
Gemini 3.7 Flash	1490.5	$1.50/M	max output
Gemini 3.6 Flash	1476.1	$1.50/M	max output
GLM 5.3	1475.1	$1.29/M	max output, image, file
GLM 5.3 Flash	1471.9	$0.237/M	file

Copy watch URL Open the frontier

The link keeps the model and mix, using the current catalogue. Monthly spend and switching cost stay in this browser tab and are left out of the link.