
Fusion vs Grok 4.5
Multi-model panel — Fable 5 + GPT-5.5, ensembled. Beats Fable 5 at half the price. vs xAI's Grok 4.5 — the coding/agentic model, default in Grok Build. Tops SWE Marathon, ~4x more token-efficient than Opus 4.8, ~80 TPS.
Head-to-head verdict: Fusion wins 42–2 with 2 ties.
What I tested — same prompt, two models
I run the same fixed prompt set through every new model the day it drops — same string, one shot, single HTML file out — and I score the result 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. Below is what came out when I gave the exact same prompts to Fusion and Grok 4.5, side by side, on 46 shared tasks inside the Agent Operating System.
Both models were given identical prompts inside the Agent Operating System — no help, no iteration, no "best of N" tricks. I run each prompt once, save the HTML file the model produces, and score it 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The scoring is mine. The verdicts below are pulled from my source comparison guides at agentos.guide where I publish every score and the reasoning behind it.
Fusion · Dispatched from Agent OS for research-heavy prompts where ensemble accuracy outweighs single-model speed.
Grok 4.5 · Benched one-shot on the same GoldieBench game prompts as the field, with the threejs-game-director patterns baked into each prompt; weak builds iterated by Grok 4.5 itself (the model authors every fix, never hand-patched). Wired into the Agent OS as the newest engine.
Side-by-side on 49 shared tasks
Click any cell to play that model's actual one-shot attempt. Medals are derived from my 0–10 scores per task (highest = 🥇, second = 🥈, third = 🥉).
Where Fusion beat Grok 4.5
The tasks where I gave Fusion a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.
What I saw: SHOWCASE BUILD (threejs-game-director): articulated humanoid w/ walk cycle + weapon poses, 110 instanced buildings w/ lit windows, 16 neon blade signs, wet-road reflections, cops+peds AI, cohesive GTA HUD (cash/minimap/stars/weapon wheel), 71fps. Eyeball-gate passed.
What I saw: RETRY @ 24K tokens — now complete: 29KB with rAF + 7 input handlers + closed tags. Torch-lit ancient ruin, PointerLockControls, bloom, chasing enemies, boss room. The original truncated attempt has been replaced with a working build.
What I saw: Click to launch fireworks — particle trails, sparkle physics, AND a synthesized whoosh + boom via Web Audio. Most polished fireworks of any model.
What I saw: RETRY @ 24K tokens — now complete: 44KB three.js + WebGL using renderer.setAnimationLoop (three.js native loop), 6 input handlers, full update() per-frame: player + NPCs + enemies + weather + day/night + HUD. Densest build on the bench.
What I saw: RETRY @ 24K tokens — now complete: 30KB juicy arcade build with 2 rAFs + 9 input handlers + Web Audio + closed tags. Score HUD, lives, polish. The original truncated version has been replaced.
Where Grok 4.5 beat Fusion
The tasks where I gave Grok 4.5 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.
What I saw: One-shot: beautiful animated northern-lights over mountains, intensity/flow sliders, atmospheric.
What I saw: One-shot: synthwave outrun driver — sunset, palm-lined road, cohesive HUD; premium retro feel.
Strengths & weaknesses I logged
Fusion
Strengths
- Premium Fusion panel scored 69.0% on DRACO deep-research benchmark — beats solo Fable 5 by +3.7 points
- Budget panel ties Fable 5 at ~64.7% for roughly half the cost
- Vendor-agnostic — model panel can swap as new frontier releases land
Trade-offs
- Ensemble latency higher than any single model (panel calls run in parallel but the slowest still gates the response)
- No per-task goldiebench scoring yet — bench rank pending
Grok 4.5
Strengths
- SWE Marathon resolution #1: 29.0% (Opus 4.8 26.0, Fable 24.0)
- ~4.2x more token-efficient than Opus 4.8 on SWE-Bench Pro (15,954 vs 67,020 avg output tokens); ~80 TPS
- Strong one-shot game builds: gorgeous multi-part heroes + layered worlds + cohesive HUDs first try (dragonrealm, crypt, skyrim)
Trade-offs
- Raycaster/FPS (doom) under-renders + walks out of bounds one-shot; needed multiple self-fix passes
- Occasional TDZ/init bug blanks a build to black (racing) — recovered by the model itself in one pass
- Not available in the EU until mid-July 2026
Pricing & context — the spec sheet
| Spec | Fusion | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | OpenRouter | xAI · Grok Build |
| Context window | Varies — depends on which panel models are dispatched | xAI's smartest model, built for coding + agentic tasks; trained alongside Cursor. Default model in Grok Build. Benched here via OpenRouter (x-ai/grok-4.5). |
| Price | OpenRouter Fusion API pricing | $2 / 1M input · $6 / 1M output |
| Pricing detail | OpenRouter's Fusion API dispatches a single prompt to multiple frontier models and ensembles the answers. Premium panel: Fable 5 + GPT-5.5. Budget panel: cheaper open-weights models. Roughly half the per-token cost of a Fable 5 solo call. | ~4.2x fewer output tokens than Opus 4.8 on SWE-Bench Pro (15,954 vs 67,020 avg) and served at ~80 TPS, so real cost/latency is well below the sticker. Free for a limited time in Grok Build + Cursor. |
| Release | 2026-06-14 | 2026-07-08 |
| Bench coverage | 47/47 scored · avg 8.59/10 | 48/50 scored · avg 7.60/10 |
The verdict — which should you pick?
Across 46 scored shared tasks, Fusion averaged 8.59/10, beating Grok 4.5's 7.61/10 by 0.98 points. Pick Fusion when the build has to ship on the first prompt and you can afford the trade-offs in the comparison below.
If you only run one of these inside your stack, the head-to-head average above is the call. If you can run both, my honest play is to wire Fusion and Grok 4.5 both into the Agent Operating System and dispatch each from the kanban by task type — deep-research workflows where panel consensus beats single-model answers → Fusion, one-shot end-to-end app + game builds from a single prompt → Grok 4.5. That's the same setup I run for the 4,000+ founders inside the AI Profit Boardroom.
FAQ — Fusion vs Grok 4.5
Which is better, Fusion or Grok 4.5?
On Goldie Bench, Fusion averages 8.59/10 across the shared tasks, with 24 gold, 10 silver, 6 bronze overall. Grok 4.5 averages 7.61/10, with 12 gold, 34 silver, 2 bronze. Fusion wins the head-to-head 42–2.
How much does Fusion cost vs Grok 4.5?
Fusion: OpenRouter's Fusion API dispatches a single prompt to multiple frontier models and ensembles the answers. Premium panel: Fable 5 + GPT-5.5. Budget panel: cheaper open-weights models. Roughly half the per-token cost of a Fable 5 solo call. Grok 4.5: ~4.2x fewer output tokens than Opus 4.8 on SWE-Bench Pro (15,954 vs 67,020 avg) and served at ~80 TPS, so real cost/latency is well below the sticker. Free for a limited time in Grok Build + Cursor.
What's the context window for Fusion vs Grok 4.5?
Fusion has a Varies — depends on which panel models are dispatched context window. Grok 4.5 has a xAI's smartest model, built for coding + agentic tasks; trained alongside Cursor. Default model in Grok Build. Benched here via OpenRouter (x-ai/grok-4.5). context window.
When should I pick Fusion over Grok 4.5?
Pick Fusion for: Deep-research workflows where panel consensus beats single-model answers; Cost-sensitive operators who want Fable-5-class output at ~half the bill; Production agents that benefit from vendor-redundancy on every call. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Ensemble latency higher than any single model (panel calls run in parallel but the slowest still gates the response); No per-task goldiebench scoring yet — bench rank pending.
When should I pick Grok 4.5 over Fusion?
Pick Grok 4.5 for: One-shot end-to-end app + game builds from a single prompt; Cost/latency-sensitive agentic coding loops (token-efficient + fast); Office-work automation (Excel/PowerPoint/Word via Grok Build). The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Raycaster/FPS (doom) under-renders + walks out of bounds one-shot; needed multiple self-fix passes; Occasional TDZ/init bug blanks a build to black (racing) — recovered by the model itself in one pass; Not available in the EU until mid-July 2026.
How does Goldie Bench score Fusion vs Grok 4.5?
Every demo on this page was built by Julian Goldie inside the Agent Operating System — same fixed prompt for both models, one shot, single HTML file out. Each result gets a 0–10 score on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The highest score on each task gets gold; second gets silver; third gets bronze. See methodology for full provenance.
Related comparisons
Other head-to-heads using the same scoring system:
Fusion vs Hermes MoA Grok 4.5 vs Hermes MoA Fusion vs Claude Fable 5 Grok 4.5 vs Claude Fable 5 Fusion vs Grok (X real-time) Grok 4.5 vs Grok (X real-time) Fusion vs MiniMax M3 Grok 4.5 vs MiniMax M3Full model pages: Fusion · Grok 4.5 · back to the leaderboard
Run this stack yourself.
Every demo on this bench was built inside the Agent Operating System — one prompt, one shot, single HTML file out. The Agent OS, the prompts, the templates, the weekly walkthroughs and 4,000+ founders shipping with it every day all live inside the AI Profit Boardroom.














































