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Claude Opus 4 vs Phi-4: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $15.00/$75.00. Claude Opus 4 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1360 vs 1130. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 50 tokens/sec. Claude Opus 4 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1330 vs 1150. Claude Opus 4 offers a larger 200K context window vs 16K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Opus 4Phi-4
ProviderAnthropicMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$15.00$0.070
Output Price / 1M tokens$75.00$0.140
Context Window200K16.384K
Max Output Tokens32,0004,096
Arena ELO1,3301,150
Coding ELO1,3601,130
TTFT (ms)500100
Tokens/sec50160
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionYesNo
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. Its 200K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

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

Best for:

codinganalysisagentscomplex-reasoning
When to Use Phi-4

Choose Phi-4 when you need: ultra-low cost for a capable model, strong math for its size (14b params), very fast inference, can run on consumer hardware. It excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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