As of August 25, 2026, Nova 2 Sonic is 83% cheaper per million tokens than Grok-4.1 Thinking. Grok-4.1 Thinking is $3.00 / $15.00 per million input/output tokens versus Nova 2 Sonic at $0.33 / $2.75. Sources: https://docs.x.ai/docs/models and https://anotherwrapper.com/tools/llm-pricing
Sources: xAI API pricing (https://docs.x.ai/docs/models); AnotherWrapper LLM pricing (https://anotherwrapper.com/tools/llm-pricing)
Grok-4.1 Thinking
xAI
Input
$3.00
Output
$15.00
Nova 2 Sonic
Amazon
Input
$0.33
Output
$2.75
Token pricing, specs, and benchmarks side by side
Grok-4.1 ThinkingNova 2 SonicVerdict
Both models are closely matched on benchmarks. Nova 2 Sonic has the pricing advantage, making it the better value unless Grok-4.1 Thinking's specific capabilities are critical to your workflow.
As of August 25, 2026, Nova 2 Sonic is 83% cheaper on blended LLM API pricing. Nova 2 Sonic costs $0.33 per million input tokens and $2.75 per million output tokens ($3.08 blended 1M-in + 1M-out). Grok-4.1 Thinking costs $3.00 / $15.00 per million tokens ($18.00 blended). Sources: https://docs.x.ai/docs/models and https://anotherwrapper.com/tools/llm-pricing. The cheapest LLM for your app still depends on how many output tokens you generate.
Grok-4.1 Thinking xAI API pricing is $3.00 input and $15.00 output per million tokens via xAI. Nova 2 Sonic Amazon API pricing is $0.33 input and $2.75 output per million tokens via Amazon. Use those four numbers, not ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription prices, when you are comparing APIs.
Neither Grok-4.1 Thinking nor Nova 2 Sonic has a published SWE-bench or LiveCodeBench score on this page yet. Use the comparison table for the evals that do exist.
Grok-4.1 Thinking supports a 256K token context window, while Nova 2 Sonic supports 1M tokens. Nova 2 Sonic offers a larger context window. Filling a larger window bills more input tokens, so the cheaper-per-million model can still cost more on long documents.
Shared benchmark scores for Grok-4.1 Thinking and Nova 2 Sonic are still limited. Check the comparison table for the evals each model has published. Check the comparison table for GPQA Diamond, SWE-bench, MMLU, HLE, and the other evals we track. Token price and benchmark score together are the usual LLM comparison, not either number alone.
Both Grok-4.1 Thinking and Nova 2 Sonic are production API models. For cost-sensitive production traffic, Nova 2 Sonic has better economics on the blended 1M-in + 1M-out scale. For maximum capability, weight the benchmark table for your domain. Many production stacks route cheap models for drafts and a frontier model for the hard turn, which is usually cheaper than sending everything to the expensive API.
Yes. Call Grok-4.1 Thinking through xAI and Nova 2 Sonic through Amazon with separate API keys, or through a gateway that already wraps both. Keep prompts in tokens, not characters, when you estimate the invoice. AnotherWrapper templates can swap providers without rewriting auth and billing.
List rates are the latest published xAI API pricing and Amazon API pricing, quoted per million tokens. Official rate sheets: https://docs.x.ai/docs/models and https://anotherwrapper.com/tools/llm-pricing. Prompt caching, batch APIs, and committed-use discounts can change the invoice. Benchmark scores are from official publications and independent evals, updated as new numbers land.
Grok-4.1 Thinking supports up to 8K output tokens per request, while Nova 2 Sonic supports up to 66K output tokens. Output tokens are usually the expensive half of API pricing, so a higher max output cap is a capability, not a discount.
Grok-4.1 Thinking has a measured throughput of approximately 80 tokens/second. Throughput data for Nova 2 Sonic is not yet available. Throughput (tokens per second) and time-to-first-token are why two models with the same per-million-token price can still feel different in chat and agents.
Use the model pickers at the top of this LLM comparison. Search any model in the index and the URL updates. Open Grok-4.1 Thinking or Nova 2 Sonic from the sidebar for the single-model API pricing page, or go back to the LLM pricing table to sort by cheapest blended cost.
This comparison covers API pricing, context window, throughput, and benchmark scores. Grok-4.1 Thinking costs $3.00/M input and $15.00/M output. Nova 2 Sonic costs $0.33/M input and $2.75/M output.
Rank both on the LLM leaderboard, SWE-bench, and Humanity's Last Exam.
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