Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 17, 2026noindex (thin pair)
In this head-to-head showdown, TheDrummer: Rocinante 12B is more budget-friendly at $0.5/1M per 1M output tokens. Review the complete breakdown below to determine which model best fits your performance and budget requirements.
3 direct benchmark disciplines evaluated across capability, speed, and cost
Previous xAI generation before Grok 4. Kept for grok 3 vs grok 4.
Auto-discovered from OpenRouter (thedrummer/rocinante-12b). Preview until a second source matches.
Single model data
No latency data
$0.5 / 1M output
Relative percentile scores computed across all active models in the benchmark catalog.
Comparing top Western standard models with China's leading frontier rival across 6 skill dimensions. Tap any spoke or dot to inspect.
Category wins across reasoning intelligence, generation speed, and token cost.
Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy
Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness
Cost per million tokens and max context window length
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | TheDrummer: Rocinante 12B | Advantage Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preference Elo | — | — | |
| LiveBench | — | — | |
| SWE-bench | — | — | |
| GPQA Diamond | — | — | |
| Time to first token | — | — | |
| Output speed | 88 tok/s | — | — |
| Input price | $0.25/1M | +$2.75/1M | |
| Output price | $0.5/1M | +$14.5/1M | |
| Context window | +66k |
Simulate monthly production API costs in USD (US Dollar).
TheDrummer: Rocinante 12B is estimated to save $313.75/month ($3,765/year).
Need SWE-bench on both sides.
Lower output list price ($0.5/1M).
Need TTFT on both sides.
Larger window (131k).
Grok 3 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.
| Target Workload | Recommended Pick | Evaluation Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Repo / coding agents | insufficient data | Need SWE-bench on both sides. |
| High-volume chat | TheDrummer: Rocinante 12B | Lower output list price ($0.5/1M). |
| Voice / low-latency UI | insufficient data | Need TTFT on both sides. |
| Long-document RAG | Grok 3 | Larger window (131k). |
| Screenshots / vision | Grok 3 | Grok 3 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog. |
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Verified Head-to-Head Telemetry
