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Claude Opus 4 vs GPT-4.1 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

GPT-4.1 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.40/$1.60 per million tokens vs $15.00/$75.00. Claude Opus 4 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1360 vs 1230. GPT-4.1 Mini is faster at 115 tokens/sec vs 50 tokens/sec. Claude Opus 4 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1330 vs 1240. GPT-4.1 Mini offers a larger 1048K context window vs 200K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Opus 4GPT-4.1 Mini
ProviderAnthropicOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$15.00$0.400
Output Price / 1M tokens$75.00$1.60
Context Window200K1.047576M
Max Output Tokens32,00032,768
Arena ELO1,3301,240
Coding ELO1,3601,230
TTFT (ms)500190
Tokens/sec50115
MultimodalYesYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesYes
When to Use Claude Opus 4

Choose Claude Opus 4 when you need: top-tier coding and reasoning, excellent agentic capabilities, strong instruction following, 200k context window. It excels at coding, analysis, agents, complex-reasoning tasks.

Strengths:

  • Top-tier coding and reasoning
  • Excellent agentic capabilities
  • Strong instruction following
  • 200K context window

Best for:

codinganalysisagentscomplex-reasoning
When to Use GPT-4.1 Mini

Choose GPT-4.1 Mini when you need: 1m token context window at low cost, great balance of speed and quality, strong coding for a mini model, affordable for high-volume use. It excels at chatbots, long-context, cost-sensitive tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two. Its 1048K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • 1M token context window at low cost
  • Great balance of speed and quality
  • Strong coding for a mini model
  • Affordable for high-volume use

Best for:

chatbotslong-contextcost-sensitive

Frequently Asked Questions

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