Claude Sonnet 4.5 is 'the best coding model'—what developers actually think

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is probably the 'best coding model in the world', at least now ^[1]. That bold line frames the debate: does top billing translate into real usage or better code, or is it mostly hype? The answer, as this chatter shows, is nuanced and messy.

On the other side, Grok is now the most popular model on OpenRouter ^[2]. The buzz pinpoints pricing and access: many Grok options are cheap or free, and a lot of traffic flows through a free endpoint. That skews what 'popular' really means in practice.

• Grok is the most popular model on OpenRouter due, in part, to cheap or free access ^[2].
• Traffic from the free endpoint matters—ranking may not reflect paid usage or real enterprise adoption ^[2].
• Grok 4 Fast and Grok Code Fast offer fast, affordable options with good tool-calling support, but some users say they're not very smart for harder coding tasks ^[2].
• Some users find Grok extremely verbose yet fast, which can help iteration but sometimes hurts concise results ^[2].

So, does best-in-class equal best-in-use? Not yet. Pricing, access, and prompt engineering shape adoption more than pedigree alone—watch how coding benchmarks evolve and who actually pays for the top tools ^[2]. The ongoing tug-of-war between hype and measurable performance is what will matter next.

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