# Codestral vs Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)

> Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.5 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 3.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)'s lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-grok-4-20
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 0 categories and Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) leads 52.2 to 19.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 32.5% for Codestral and 75% for Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning).
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $1.25 / $2.50 for Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning).
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 256K.
- Codestral has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | xAI |
| Noometry Index | 30.1 | 48.5 |
| Rank | 287 | 48 |
| Context | 256K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $1.25 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $2.50 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Codestral: 26.9 (#316)
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 41.8 (#104)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | 1,150 |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1374 |
| WeirdML | — | 52.3% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1458 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Codestral: —
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 34.3 (#43)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 57.3% |
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 18% |
| LMArena Search | — | 1189 |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 4,663 |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.1 (#244)
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 52.2 (#30)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | 75% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 65.1% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 85.4% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 89.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 24% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 63.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1451 |
| DTBench | — | 90.1% |
| LMCA | — | 38.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 152.01 |
| ForecastBench | — | 61.4 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 48.0 (#54)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 44.9% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 17.1% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 92.2% |
| ProofBench | — | 14% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1455 |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 52.8 (#54)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 89.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 30.2% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1440 |

## Multimodal

- Codestral: —
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 33.2 (#88)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1263 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | — | 0% |
| LMArena Document | — | 1416 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 54.7 (#38)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1440 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1481 |
| LMArena French | — | 1477 |
| LMArena German | — | 1463 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1450 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1417 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1457 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1442 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 75.0 (#79)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1420 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 45.4 (#33)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| CL-bench | — | 22.2% |
| CL-bench Life | — | 11.9% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1436 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning): 65.9 (#42)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1451 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1439 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1574 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1456 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)?

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) is the stronger model overall, scoring 48.5 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 3.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)'s lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning)?

Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) lists at $1.25 and $2.50.

### Is Codestral or Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) better for coding?

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.8 versus 26.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) does, with 1M tokens against 256K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) has 46.