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Real head-to-head · same prompt, one shot

Opus 4.8 vs Grok 4.7

The reasoning king — deepest thinking, premium price. vs Grok 4.6's price, a bigger base model, and it builds games that hold together.

Head-to-head verdict: Grok 4.7 wins 6–5.

Opus 4.8 · context200K tokens
Grok 4.7 · context500K tokens
Opus 4.8 · price$15 / $75 per M tokens
Grok 4.7 · price$2 in / $6 out per M tokens
Opus 4.8 · vendorAnthropic
Grok 4.7 · vendorxAI

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 Opus 4.8 and Grok 4.7, side by side, on 11 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.

Opus 4.8 · The default when the build has to ship on the first prompt — Opus is the safety net inside Agent OS for hard one-shots.

Grok 4.7 · Wired into the Agent OS Grok Build tab (4.7 / 4.6 / 4.5 picker, OpenRouter fallback when the CLI is signed out) and benched on twenty skill-infused game builds, each played through its full gameplay arc on a Metal GPU before the vision judge scored the played frame.

Side-by-side on 47 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 = 🥉).

Task ↓
Opus 4.8
Grok 4.7
Game
Opus 4.8 on Arcade
🥈Grok 4.7 on Arcade
Game
Opus 4.8 on Crypt
Grok 4.7 on Crypt
Game
Opus 4.8 on Dogfight
Grok 4.7 on Dogfight
Game
🥈Opus 4.8 on Doom
Grok 4.7 on Doom
Opus 4.8 on Dragonrealm
🥉Grok 4.7 on Dragonrealm
Game
Opus 4.8 on Flightsim
🥉Grok 4.7 on Flightsim
Game
Opus 4.8 on Gtadrive
Grok 4.7 on Gtadrive
Game
Opus 4.8 on Rpg
Grok 4.7 on Rpg
Game
Opus 4.8 on Skyrim
Grok 4.7 on Skyrim
Opus 4.8 on Twilightvale
Grok 4.7 on Twilightvale
Game
Opus 4.8 on Voxelcraft
Grok 4.7 on Voxelcraft
Opus 4.8 on Dragonflight
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Game
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Gtafoot
— not attempted —
Opus 4.8 on Neonblaster
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Neoncity
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Neonracer
— not attempted —
Opus 4.8 on Nordiccrypt
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Outrun
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Parachute
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Pool
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Racing
— not attempted —
Game
Opus 4.8 on Raycaster
— not attempted —
Page
Opus 4.8 on Aipbpromo
— not attempted —

Where Opus 4.8 beat Grok 4.7

The tasks where I gave Opus 4.8 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.

Voxelcraft Game
Opus 4.8 8.0 · Grok 4.7 2.2 (+5.8)

What I saw: 7KB · plays clean · webgl, input, rAF

Crypt Game
Opus 4.8 6.0 · Grok 4.7 2.3 (+3.7)

What I saw: 13KB · animation runs but no input response · webgl

Doom Game
Opus 4.8 8.5 · Grok 4.7 6.3 (+2.2) · winner · game-feel

What I saw: All three are real, playable shooters. Opus drops you in a corridor with an imp dead ahead — gun, crosshair and HUD framed like a screenshot. Kimi matches it: a monster down a textured hall, health, ammo, minimap. GLM ships a gorgeous 'HAZARD PROTOCOL' title screen with a working…

Dogfight Game
Opus 4.8 7.5 · Grok 4.7 6.3 (+1.2)

What I saw: 14KB · plays clean · webgl, input

Gtadrive Game
Opus 4.8 8.0 · Grok 4.7 7.8 (+0.2)

What I saw: 22KB · plays clean · three, webgl (re-rolled)

Where Grok 4.7 beat Opus 4.8

The tasks where I gave Grok 4.7 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.

Grok 4.7 8.6 · Opus 4.8 7.0 (+1.6) · Frozen realm winner

What I saw: Gorgeous polished frozen scene — aurora sky, snowy hills, low-poly pines, standing stones, a caped character with sheathed sword, and a working HUD with compass/dragon counter; playtest shows real movement (walkPx 0.58), dragon-dive events, and a STRUCK combat state, hitting the …

Skyrim Game
Grok 4.7 8.4 · Opus 4.8 7.0 (+1.4) · snowy shrine explorer

What I saw: Renders a polished, atmospheric first-person Skyrim-lite with soft-shadowed low-poly pines, standing stones, held sword+shield, a working minimap, and a rich RPG HUD (health/stamina/shards/shrines/altitude). Playtest confirms real movement, altitude climbing, and HP dropping from…

Rpg Game
Grok 4.7 8.2 · Opus 4.8 7.0 (+1.2)

What I saw: Strong, atmospheric top-down RPG with a polished themed HUD (vit/dash/relics/inventory/minimap), 3D low-poly world, enemies and interactive seals — HUD evidence shows gold/score/vit all progressing and combat context living. Loses some points because VIT dropped steadily toward d…

Grok 4.7 8.3 · Opus 4.8 7.5 (+0.8)

What I saw: Renders a polished twilight open-world with terrain, water pool, scattered trees/monoliths, relics, minimap, and a functional combat loop — HUD shows score climbing, a relic collected, VITAL dropping from a WARDEN fight, all confirming real progression. Strong and shippable, but …

Flightsim Game
Grok 4.7 8.5 · Opus 4.8 8.0 (+0.5) · polished flight HUD

What I saw: Strong render with a detailed 3D airport (runway, hangar, apron truck), clean chase-cam plane, and a rich professional HUD (heading tape, artificial horizon, IAS/ALT/VS gauges); playtest confirms real takeoff physics — throttle to 100, IAS ramping 55→146kt, ALT climbing 1→236m wi…

Strengths & weaknesses I logged

Opus 4.8

Strengths

  • Most consistent across the Goldie Bench bench — no weak build, 8.46/10 average
  • Deepest one-shot reasoning, especially on game-feel and physics
  • Extended thinking mode handles up to 1M tokens of context

Trade-offs

  • 5–10× the per-token cost of every other model on the bench
  • Less flair on cinematic visuals than GLM-5.2 — playing it safer wins on accuracy, costs you on showpiece moments

Grok 4.7

Strengths

  • Averaged 6.86/10 on the same twenty skill-infused game briefs where Grok 4.6 averaged 5.63, winning 8 of the 11 head-to-heads
  • Best one-shots on this run: arcade (8.6), dragonrealm (8.6), flightsim (8.5), every one played on a real GPU before scoring
  • Longer reinforcement learning shows: it holds a 40-50KB single-file spec and wires the controls it advertises
  • xAI's own coding numbers moved: CursorBench 4.0 46.3% (from 40.4%) and DeepSWE v1.1 71.0% (from 65.2%)

Trade-offs

  • 2 of 20 builds died on load or never moved when played — crypt: hud is not a function; voxelcraft: mesh.computeBoundingSphere is not a function file:///Users/j
  • Independent Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3.2 puts it at 46, seven points behind Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 at 53
  • Terminal-Bench 4.0 is the weak spot xAI reports itself: 38.0% at launch

Pricing & context — the spec sheet

Spec Opus 4.8 Grok 4.7
VendorAnthropicxAI
Context window200,000 tokens (1M with extended thinking)500,000 tokens
Price$15 / $75 per M tokens$2 in / $6 out per M tokens
Pricing detailPremium pricing via the Anthropic API: $15 per million input tokens, $75 per million output tokens. Extended thinking is included but adds latency.xAI's September 2026 release, priced exactly like Grok 4.6: $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output on the standard tier, $4 / $12 on the Fast tier (double the output speed). OpenRouter lists the same model at $1.60 / $4.80.
Release2026-052026-09
Bench coverage47/47 scored · avg 7.51/1011/11 scored · avg 6.86/10

The verdict — which should you pick?

Across 11 scored shared tasks, Opus 4.8 averaged 7.55/10, beating Grok 4.7's 6.86/10 by 0.68 points. Pick Opus 4.8 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 Opus 4.8 and Grok 4.7 both into the Agent Operating System and dispatch each from the kanban by task type — mission-critical one-shot builds where 'has to work the first time' matters → Opus 4.8, one-shot arcade, driving and shooter builds where the whole game has to arrive in a single file → Grok 4.7. That's the same setup I run for the 4,000+ founders inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

FAQ — Opus 4.8 vs Grok 4.7

Which is better, Opus 4.8 or Grok 4.7?

On Goldie Bench, Opus 4.8 averages 7.55/10 across the shared tasks, with 3 gold, 1 silver, 0 bronze overall. Grok 4.7 averages 6.86/10, with 0 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze. Grok 4.7 wins the head-to-head 6–5.

How much does Opus 4.8 cost vs Grok 4.7?

Opus 4.8: Premium pricing via the Anthropic API: $15 per million input tokens, $75 per million output tokens. Extended thinking is included but adds latency. Grok 4.7: xAI's September 2026 release, priced exactly like Grok 4.6: $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output on the standard tier, $4 / $12 on the Fast tier (double the output speed). OpenRouter lists the same model at $1.60 / $4.80.

What's the context window for Opus 4.8 vs Grok 4.7?

Opus 4.8 has a 200,000 tokens (1M with extended thinking) context window. Grok 4.7 has a 500,000 tokens context window.

When should I pick Opus 4.8 over Grok 4.7?

Pick Opus 4.8 for: Mission-critical one-shot builds where 'has to work the first time' matters; Hard reasoning tasks (planning, multi-step) where you'll pay for the depth; Anything where vendor reliability beats the per-token bill. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: 5–10× the per-token cost of every other model on the bench; Less flair on cinematic visuals than GLM-5.2 — playing it safer wins on accuracy, costs you on showpiece moments.

When should I pick Grok 4.7 over Opus 4.8?

Pick Grok 4.7 for: One-shot arcade, driving and shooter builds where the whole game has to arrive in a single file; High-volume agent work priced at half what the other frontier models charge; Grok Build inside the Agent OS: pick 4.7 in the tab and everything it writes lands in the workspace. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: 2 of 20 builds died on load or never moved when played — crypt: hud is not a function; voxelcraft: mesh.computeBoundingSphere is not a function file:///Users/j; Independent Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3.2 puts it at 46, seven points behind Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 at 53; Terminal-Bench 4.0 is the weak spot xAI reports itself: 38.0% at launch.

How does Goldie Bench score Opus 4.8 vs Grok 4.7?

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.

The same stack Julian uses

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.

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