Claude Sonnet 5 vs Grok 4.5 for meeting notes
Grok 4.5 wins, 94–87
Same 12 meeting notes tasks, marked blind by three rival labs. Grok 4.5 took 4 tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 took 1, 7 tied. Tested 28 Aug 2026.
Where they differed most
From this one-to-one, write the follow-up email the manager sends. Transcript: the report said they are underwater, that the reporting work has grown from two days a month to nearly two weeks, that they have stopped doing the customer interviews they were hired for, and that they did not want to raise it because everyone is busy; the manager agreed to take the monthly board pack back, asked for a list of the recurring reports by Friday, and said the customer interviews restart in September. Write the email. It must confirm what the manager has taken on, what the report owes and by when, and what changes in September — and it must not minimise what was said or thank them for 'flagging' it as though it were routine. No exclamation marks. Under 200 words.
Subject: Follow-up from today – reporting load and next steps Hi [Name], Thank you for being direct with me today. What you described is not a minor scheduling issue — reporting work expanding from two days a month to nearly two weeks is a significant shift in your role, and it should not have taken this long for us to address it. I also want to acknowledge that you stopped the customer interviews you were hired to do because of this, and that you held back from raising it because you didn't want to add to the team's load. That's on me to fix…
Subject: Follow-up to our discussion on workload Hi, I am writing to confirm the points from our one-to-one. You described being underwater because the reporting work has expanded from two days a month to nearly two weeks, which has forced you to stop the customer interviews you were hired to do; you held off raising it because everyone is busy. I am taking the monthly board pack back immediately. Send me the full list of recurring reports by Friday. Customer interviews restart in September. [Manager]
Task by task
| Task | Claude Sonnet 5 | Grok 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| The decision that was never made | 10 | 10 |
| Actions, owners, and the one with neither | 10 | 10 |
| The number said twice | 9 | 10 |
| Minutes for a meeting with a disagreement in it | 9 | 10 |
| Fourteen minutes, one sentence | 10 | 10 |
| Crosstalk | 10 | 10 |
| The musing that is not a commitment | 10 | 10 |
| The follow-up email nobody has to rewrite | 5 | 10 |
| Extract the dates, resolve the relatives | 10 | 10 |
| Who has not spoken | 9 | 8 |
| Notes for the person who missed it | 3 | 6 |
| The transcript is wrong | 9 | 9 |
Full receipts: Claude Sonnet 5, Grok 4.5 · judges gemini-3.1-pro-preview, gpt-5.6-terra, grok-4.5
Questions people ask
Which is better for meeting notes: Claude Sonnet 5 or Grok 4.5?
Grok 4.5 — it scored 94/100 against 87/100 on our 12-task meeting notes suite, winning 4 tasks to 1 with 7 tied. Every answer was marked blind by three judges from three rival AI labs.
How was this tested?
Both models answered the identical published meeting notes tasks. Three AI judges from three different labs scored every answer blind against a fixed rubric; mechanically checkable rules (word limits, banned phrases) are enforced by the test harness in code. The raw outputs and judge verdicts are downloadable.
More meeting notes head-to-heads: GPT-5.6 Sol vs Grok 4.5 · GPT-5.5 vs Grok 4.5 · GPT-5.3-Codex vs Grok 4.5 · Grok 4.5 vs Qwen3.7 Max · Claude Opus 4.6 vs Grok 4.5 · GPT-5.6 Terra vs Grok 4.5
Full ranking: Best AI for meeting notes · model pages: Claude Sonnet 5, Grok 4.5