The short answer: Claude for documents, Office and coding, Grok for live X news and video
Choose Claude if your work is documents, slides and code: its Free plan includes Claude Design, Slides and Docs, and Pro adds Claude Code and Claude in Chrome and Microsoft 365. Choose Grok if you follow news on X and the web as it happens, want short AI video in the same plan, or already pay for X features. Entry prices differ: Grok Plus is $8 a month, Claude Pro $20.
What was compared and how
Task: everyday individual use, meaning writing and documents, research on current topics, image and video creation and coding. We compared the consumer apps and their individual plans (Claude Free, Pro and Max; Grok free access plus Plus, Premium, Super and Ultra), not the APIs or team plans.
Evidence: Anthropic's Claude pricing page, xAI's Grok product page and the grok.com plans page for the United States, all read on October 25, 2026. This is a documentation comparison. AppFor.ai has not run both assistants on the same inputs, so nothing below is a measured quality or speed result. Prices are monthly US prices before tax.
Compare the same criteria
Each criterion states what each vendor documents and what it means for the task. Where a page does not say something, we write that it is not established.
- Free plan. Claude: chat on web, desktop and mobile, web search, file creation with code execution, memory, connectors, artifacts, up to 5 projects, and Claude Design, Slides and Docs. Grok: free to try on the web and in the apps; free limits are not published on the pages we checked. What this means: Claude's free feature list is easier to plan around.
- Current events. Claude: web search on all plans. Grok: live search across the web and X with citations, and X integration for breaking news. What this means: for questions that depend on X posts, Grok is built around that source; check the cited posts either way.
- Documents and Office. Claude: Docs and Slides on Free, Claude for Microsoft 365 and Outlook from Pro. Grok: canvas for long-form writing and file and PDF analysis. What this means: if your work ends in Word, PowerPoint or Outlook, Claude Pro works inside those apps.
- Images and video. Claude: image or video generation is not listed on its pricing page. Grok: Grok Imagine for images and videos up to 15 seconds, with 1080p video from Super. What this means: for AI video, only Grok includes it in the plans we compared.
- Coding. Claude: Claude Code from Pro, not on Free. Grok: code generation in chat, Grok Build in the shared usage pool, and cloud agents, code hosting and AI code reviews from Premium. What this means: Claude's coding agent starts at $20; Grok's cloud agents start at $30.
- Research and agents. Claude: Research from Pro, plus task hand-off and scheduling, and Claude in Chrome. Grok: a multi-agent mode on paid plans, in which several agents work on parts of a question in parallel. What this means: both offer deeper research on paid tiers; how the results compare is not established.
- Bundled extras. Claude Max: $100 to $200 a month in API credits for the Claude Platform. Grok: X benefits on every paid plan, from fewer timeline ads on Plus to ad-free scrolling on most surfaces from Premium. What this means: each bundle only adds value if you use the other service.
Which fits your real work?
Turning meeting notes into a slide deck. Claude fits, since Slides is listed on the Free plan and Pro adds Claude for Microsoft 365. Grok can draft the text, but slide creation is not listed.
Tracking reaction to a product launch on social media. Grok fits, because live X search is its documented focus. Claude can search the web, but X coverage is not established.
Refactoring a codebase on your computer. Claude Pro fits at $20 with Claude Code. Grok fits if you want cloud agents and code reviews in Premium at $30 and also use X.
Cost of getting the work done
Claude, monthly: Free; Pro $20 billed monthly, or $17 a month with annual billing ($200 up front); Max from $100 with 5x or 20x the usage of Pro.
Grok, monthly: free to try; Plus $8; Premium $30 with 4x the usage of Plus; Super $100 with 15x; Ultra $200 with 50x. At the time of checking, the first month of Premium, Super and Ultra was 50% off. Prices exclude taxes.
Like for like on monthly billing: Grok Plus at $8 has no Claude equivalent; Claude Pro at $20 sits between Grok Plus and Premium; Claude Max from $100 and Grok Super at $100 match on price. Neither vendor states usage as a message count, so work per dollar is not established.
Try both on the same small task
Suggested comparison, not a test we have run: give both free versions the same one-page product brief you are allowed to share and the prompt below, then check the output against the brief.
- Every claim in the output appears in the brief.
- Missing details are marked as not stated, not invented.
- The tone and length match the instruction.
- Count the edits you needed before you could send it; one run is a signal, not a ranking.
What would change the choice
Check these conditions before you subscribe. For plans and features, see our Claude profile and our Grok profile.
- If you work in Microsoft 365, Claude Pro adds Claude inside Office and Outlook.
- If you never use X, Grok's X search and bundled X benefits matter less.
- If you need AI video, Grok Imagine is included; Claude's pricing page does not list it.
- If you need the API for your own software, compare Anthropic's and xAI's developer pricing instead.
Go to the source
Sources & further reading
Based on the official documentation below. Features and access can change; check the provider before making a decision.
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