Grok vs ChatGPT: Which AI Reigns Supreme in 2025/2026?

Quick Comparison: Grok vs ChatGPT at a Glance

Before we dive into the details, let's review both models and set the stage. Although both ChatGPT and Grok are powerful AI chatbots, they have very different origins and philosophies.

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What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is OpenAI's conversational AI that launched in November 2022 and quickly became the fastest-growing consumer application in history.

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Built on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture, ChatGPT uses transformer-based neural networks trained on massive amounts of text data. The latest model, GPT-5.1, was released on November 12, 2025. This version emphasizes a warmer, more natural personality.

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ChatGPT quickly became the industry standard for AI chatbots. It's used by millions of people daily for everything from writing emails to debugging code to analyzing business data.

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What is Grok?

Grok is xAI's answer to ChatGPT, created by Elon Musk's AI company after his departure from OpenAI in 2018.

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The chatbot runs on Grok 4, a large language model trained on internet data and real-time content from X (formerly Twitter). This gives Grok access to live social media posts, which most other AI chatbots cannot access.

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The latest model, Grok 4.1, competes directly with GPT-5.1. Grok 4 improved significantly over earlier versions and is now considered one of best AI for coding.

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Grok vs ChatGPT Comparison Table

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As you can see, both chatbots offer similar features for the most part, although ChatGPT has more bells and whistles.

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On balance, Grok has real-time data access from X, fewer content restrictions, and it was open sourced for developers, while most OpenAI’s models are proprietary and closed-source.

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Model Overview: What Powers Each Chatbot

Now that we have a good understanding of the features available in each chatbot, let’s discuss the models that power them. Both OpenAI and Grok have powerful models that differ based on pricing tiers and use cases.

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OpenAI Models

OpenAI released GPT-5 in August 2025, calling it their most advanced model yet. Three months later, on November 12, 2025, they upgraded to GPT-5.1 — the model currently powering ChatGPT.

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GPT-5.1 comes in two variants:

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• GPT-5.1 Instant handles everyday tasks with a balance of speed and intelligence. It's warmer, more conversational, and better at following instructions than GPT-5. OpenAI made this the default model for most users.

• GPT-5.1 Thinking tackles complex problems that require deeper reasoning. It adapts its thinking time based on the complexity of your question—spending more time on difficult tasks and less on simple ones.

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Behind the scenes, GPT-5.1 uses adaptive reasoning. This means the model automatically decides how much "thinking" each task requires, making it both faster and more accurate than previous versions.

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Other notable OpenAI models include GPT-4.1 for coding, o3 and o4-mini for reasoning, and GPT-4.5 for writing. Although these models are now obsolete, you may still encounter them in various APIs.

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Grok Models

xAI launched Grok 4 on July 10, 2025, marking a major leap in performance. On November 17, 2025, they released Grok 4.1 — their latest and most powerful model.

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Grok 4.1 immediately shot to #1 on LMArena's Text Arena leaderboard with an Elo rating of 1483, beating Claude Sonnet 4.5 (1445) and GPT-5.1 by significant margins.

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The model comes in two configurations:

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• Grok 4.1 (Thinking mode) delivers frontier-level reasoning with improved emotional intelligence and creative writing. Early testing showed users preferred Grok 4.1 over the previous version 65% of the time in blind comparisons.
• Grok 4.1 (Fast mode) provides quick responses without the reasoning overhead, making it ideal for simple queries.

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xAI also offers:

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• Grok 4 Heavy ($300/month tier) uses multi-agent collaboration for complex problems
• Grok 4 Fast for cost-efficient reasoning with a 2M token context window

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Winner: Grok

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Grok vs ChatGPT Benchmarks

Benchmarks give us a concrete way to compare raw performance. With that in mind, here’s how the models compare:

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Coding

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Math

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Creative Writing

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For what it’s worth, Grok 4.1 has scored the highest on the LMArena text benchmark, a blind preference test. 

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This benchmark doesn’t have results for GPT 5.1 yet, but the previous model, GPT-5, is currently in fifth place with a score of 1437.

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To conclude the benchmark comparison, keep in mind that the results of this should be taken with a grain of salt, as they won’t always directly translate to better performance in the real world.

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As an example, a model that scores lower on the tests may perform better with a better prompt than a model that scores higher but has a poorly written prompt. To learn more about prompting best practices, check out our prompting guide.

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Winner: Grok

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Grok Vs. ChatGPT features

While Grok may win in benchmarks, an area where ChatGPT is still stronger  cover the 

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That being said, both services cover the fundamentals you'd expect from modern AI, as they both have:

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• Web search
• Image generation
• File uploads
• Voice modes

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But when you dig into the details, ChatGPT offers significantly more polish and flexibility.

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Features that Both Chatbots Have

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• Web search. Both can search the web to answer current questions. Grok has a unique advantage here — it pulls live posts directly from X (formerly Twitter), giving it access to trending topics and real-time social sentiment.
• Research modes. ChatGPT calls it "Deep Research." Grok offers "DeepSearch" and "DeeperSearch." Both combine web search with reasoning to tackle complex research questions.
• Image generation. Both models can create images, while ChatGPT can also generate videos through it’s Sora 2 video generation model.
• Multimodal support. Both models can accept files, analyze images and summarize documents.
• Voice modes. Both let you talk to the AI and interrupt mid-response. ChatGPT's voice mode works on web and mobile. Grok's voice mode only works through the mobile app.

Features Only ChatGPT Has

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• Canvas. This is a Google Docs-style interface for collaborating on writing and coding projects. You can work alongside ChatGPT, making edits in real-time while the AI suggests improvements.
• Custom GPTs. Create specialized versions of ChatGPT for specific tasks, each with their own knowledge context and instructions.
• Scheduled tasks. Tell ChatGPT to run tasks at specific times. The feature is still basic, but it's a step toward AI automation that Grok doesn't match.
• Projects. Upload knowledge sources, organize chats by topic, and keep different workstreams separate.
• Team plans. ChatGPT offers dedicated business tiers starting at $25/month per user.

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Features only Grok Has

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• Real-time X integration. Grok accesses live posts from X, giving it a constant stream of current events, trending topics, and public sentiment. This makes it stronger for social listening, tracking breaking news, or understanding cultural moments as they happen.
• Fewer content restrictions. Grok answers questions most AI tools would block or sanitize. It's designed to engage with controversial, sensitive, or taboo topics.

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The Verdict

In general, ChatGPT offers more features. However, most of its advantages over Grok are UI sugar, of sorts, rather than significant workflow improvements. On the other hand, for some people the lack of censorship will certainly outweigh the extra UI capabilities.

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To summarize:

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• ChatGPT is a service with more ways to interact with the chatbot and more restrictions
• Grok is a service  that lets you interact with the chatbot about more topics without restrictions

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Winner: Draw

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ChatGPT vs Grok Pricing

Both chatbots offer free tiers and multiple paid options. Here's how they stack up:

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In general, ChatGPT offers better value. Plus costs $20/month versus SuperGrok's $30/month, yet it comes with more features including Canvas, Custom GPTs, and Projects.

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Want even better value? You can access both models on Overchat AI for just $4.99 per week, instead of paying for them separately.

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Finally, to compare API pricing:

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• ChatGPT API costs $2.50 input / $10 output per million tokens for GPT-5.1
• Grok API costs $3 input / $15 output per million tokens for Grok 4, with prices doubling after 128k tokens.

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For developers, ChatGPT also offers better rates, not to mention better toolign via OpenAI developer console.

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Winner: ChatGPT

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Grok vs ChatGPT: Real-World Comparison

For this test, we asked Grok and ChatGPT to complete a series of real-world tasks. Here’s how each model fared. For fairness, we ran both models in Overchat AI.

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Writing

For creative writing, we’ve tested quality of writing, which is a common problem area for all AI models. For creative writing, we gave each model the following prompt:

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Creative writing prompt: Write the opening paragraph (150-200 words) of a sci-fi short story about a botanist who discovers that plants on a Mars colony are developing consciousness. The tone should be contemplative and slightly unsettling. Focus on sensory details and the character's internal reaction.

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The results:

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A few thoughts:

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• It’s interesting that both models chose a similar name for the protagonist: Ellin and Dr. Ellison.
• Both pieces also feature similar themes: a plant that’s moving on its own, steam, rain, a greenhouse. 
• Despite these similarities, the Grok’s opening reads more along the lines of something you’d find in a real sci-fi story.
• It’s hard to judge creative writing, but in our opinion, Grok 4.1’s opening is better, but closer to the middle both models lose the edge, and the conclusion is also weak in both pieces. 

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‍Winner: Grok 4.1, by a thin margin

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Math

We gave the models a typical calculus problem from a university-level course (Calculus I or II). It tests understanding of derivatives, critical points, and practical application of optimization.

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The problem: 

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A cylindrical can is to be designed to hold 1000 cubic centimeters of liquid. The material for the top and bottom costs $0.05 per square centimeter, and the material for the side costs $0.03 per square centimeter. Find the dimensions (radius and height) that minimize the total cost of materials. Show your complete work including:

1. Setting up the cost function

2. Finding the constraint equation

3. Taking derivatives

4. Solving for critical points

5. Verifying your answer is a minimum 

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The correct answer is radius = 4.57 cm, height = 15.2 cm (approximately).

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After a long chain-of thought, both models gave the correct answer:

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Winner: Draw — you can safely use both models to solve mathematical problems, even at college-university levels.

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Coding

Will GPT 5.1 build a fully functioning task tracker app, or will Grok 4.1 create a more polished version?

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Front-end development is usually the most difficult for AI models, so we'll naturally test them on this.

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Our prompt:

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Build a simple task manager web app using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (vanilla JS, no frameworks). The app should:

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1. Allow users to add new tasks with a text input and button

2. Display all tasks in a list

3. Let users mark tasks as complete (with a checkbox or button)

4. Allow users to delete tasks

5. Show a count of remaining incomplete tasks

6. Save tasks to localStorage so they persist after page refresh

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Create this as a single HTML file with inline CSS and JavaScript. Make it visually clean and user-friendly.

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The results:

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• Both AI models delivered functioning code that easily accomplished the task requested by the prompt.
• Both models played it safe with the design. Good prompting techniques can improve this, though.

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Winner: Draw — you can easily create simple apps with either model.

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Bottom Line

In conclusion, we’ve tallied up the number of wins, and here are the results:

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Grok has 3 wins in:

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• Models and benchmarks
• Creative writing
• Fewer content restrictions

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ChatGPT has 2 wins in: 

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• Pricing
• Features

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Grok and ChatGPT have 3 draws in:

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• Math
• Coding
• Core functionality

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By that logic, Grok just about edges ahead in terms of direct comparison. This is not entirely surprising, after all, Grok 4.1 is a slightly newer model than GPT-5.1

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Overall winner: Grok 4.1

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That being said, you shouldn't overlook ChatGPT. It offers more features and is cheaper, making it the smarter choice for most people.

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It's a tough decision, isn't it? Fortunately, you don't have to pick one or the other — you can use both models on Overchat AI for just $4.99 per week instead of spending over $60 per month on both subscriptions.

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• Test chat with GPT without signing up.‍
• Test chat with Grok without signing up.