GPT-3.5 Turbo vs Grok-2 Comparison

Comparing GPT-3.5 Turbo and Grok-2 across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

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Performance Benchmarks

Comparative analysis across standard metrics

6 benchmarks

GPT-3.5 Turbo outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Grok-2 is better at 6 benchmarks (GPQA, HumanEval, MATH, MathVista, MMLU, MMMU).

Grok-2 significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Arena Performance

Human preference votes

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

GPT-3.5 Turbo costs less

For input processing, GPT-3.5 Turbo ($0.50/1M tokens) is 4.0x cheaper than Grok-2 ($2.00/1M tokens).

For output processing, GPT-3.5 Turbo ($1.50/1M tokens) is 6.7x cheaper than Grok-2 ($10.00/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Grok-2 is more expensive than GPT-3.5 Turbo.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers

Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

GPT-3.5 Turbo

Input tokens$0.50

Output tokens$1.50

Best providerAzure

Grok-2

Input tokens$2.00

Output tokens$10.00

Best providerxAI

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Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Grok-2 accepts 128,000 input tokens compared to GPT-3.5 Turbo's 16,385 tokens. Grok-2 can generate longer responses up to 8,000 tokens, while GPT-3.5 Turbo is limited to 4,096 tokens.

GPT-3.5 Turbo

Input16,385 tokens

Output4,096 tokens

Grok-2

Input128,000 tokens

Output8,000 tokens

Wed Mar 18 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input Capabilities

Supported data types and modalities

Grok-2 supports multimodal inputs, whereas GPT-3.5 Turbo does not.

Grok-2 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

GPT-3.5 Turbo

Text

Images

Audio

Video

Grok-2

Text

Images

Audio

Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Both models are licensed under proprietary licenses.

Both models have usage restrictions defined by their respective organizations.

GPT-3.5 Turbo

Proprietary

Closed source

Grok-2

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

GPT-3.5 Turbo was released on 2023-03-21, while Grok-2 was released on 2024-08-13.

Grok-2 is 17 months newer than GPT-3.5 Turbo.

GPT-3.5 Turbo

Mar 21, 2023

3.0 years ago

Grok-2

Aug 13, 2024

1.6 years ago

1.4yr newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

GPT-3.5 Turbo has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2021-09-30, while Grok-2's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm GPT-3.5 Turbo's training data extends to 2021-09-30, but cannot make a direct comparison without Grok-2's cutoff date.

GPT-3.5 Turbo

Sep 2021

Grok-2

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Provider Availability

GPT-3.5 Turbo is available from Azure, OpenAI. Grok-2 is available from xAI. The availability of providers can affect quality of the model and reliability.