Grok 4.6 — xAI's Frontier Reasoner Joins the Picker at a Workhorse Band
August 13, 2026
xAI's Grok 4.6 is now selectable in Alfrada. It replaces Grok 4.5, which we had to hide in July over regional restrictions, and it lands as a genuinely top-tier reasoner — #3 on our own Can it Run Alfrada? harness, behind only Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol — while billing in the Workhorse 3× band rather than SOTA 12×.
What you can do
- Pin Grok 4.6 from the model picker (Closed-Weight SOTA section) — 500K-token context, image input, always-on reasoning, and full tool support.
- Let Auto pick it — Grok 4.6 is eligible for the SOTA tier of Auto routing, so hard tasks can land on it without a manual pin.
- Use it in Swarm — as planner or as a worker alongside other models.
- Get frontier-class output for a Workhorse band — on the harness Grok 4.6 scored 8.63 composite (8.87 on the first job, 8.40 on the second), next to Opus 5 at 8.77 and Sol at 8.84.
- Keep every request on Zero Data Retention endpoints — Grok 4.6 is served through OpenRouter and Alfrada requires a ZDR-marked endpoint for every call; the model is tagged ZDR in the picker.
Where this shows up
You've been pinning Opus 5 or Sol for the hardest coding, STEM, and knowledge-work jobs and wincing at the SOTA band. Grok 4.6 gets you most of the way there — third on our own leaderboard — at a quarter of the band cost.
You were using Grok 4.5 before it disappeared from the picker in July. Grok is back, one version newer, with the same 500K context and image input, and no regional caveat this time.
You're building a Swarm and want a strong non-Anthropic, non-OpenAI voice in the debate. Add Grok 4.6 as a worker or advocate.
Try it
- [Pin Grok 4.6] "Refactor this module across files, keep your reasoning visible, and run the tests after each step."
- [Pin Grok 4.6] "Read these three papers and the attached dataset and tell me which claims the data actually supports."
- "Swarm Grok 4.6 with Opus 5 and Kimi K3 on this proposal — have them argue it out and synthesize the strongest version."
Heads up
- Grok 4.5 is retired — it no longer appears in the picker. Sessions still pinned to Grok 4.5 keep working; start a new session or re-pin to move to Grok 4.6.
- ZDR is enforced — if OpenRouter has no Zero Data Retention endpoint for Grok 4.6 at request time, Alfrada will not fall back to a retaining endpoint.
- Global route — Grok 4.6 is not offered under EU-only data residency.
- Harness scores and the full evidence package are on Can it Run Alfrada? (Grok 4.6 ran August 13 on ZDR-only endpoints).