Claude Sonnet 4 vs GPT-4.1 Nano: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

GPT-4.1 Nano is significantly cheaper at $0.10/$0.40 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. Claude Sonnet 4 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1305 vs 1150. GPT-4.1 Nano is faster at 150 tokens/sec vs 78 tokens/sec. Claude Sonnet 4 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1280 vs 1180. GPT-4.1 Nano offers a larger 1048K context window vs 200K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Sonnet 4GPT-4.1 Nano
ProviderAnthropicOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$3.00$0.100
Output Price / 1M tokens$15.00$0.400
Context Window200K1.047576M
Max Output Tokens64,00032,768
Arena ELO1,2801,180
Coding ELO1,3051,150
TTFT (ms)320130
Tokens/sec78150
MultimodalYesYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesYes
When to Use Claude Sonnet 4

Choose Claude Sonnet 4 when you need: best-in-class coding performance, 200k context window, excellent instruction following. It excels at coding, analysis, long-context, agents tasks.

Strengths:

  • Best-in-class coding performance
  • 200K context window
  • Excellent instruction following

Best for:

codinganalysislong-contextagents
When to Use GPT-4.1 Nano

Choose GPT-4.1 Nano when you need: ultra-low pricing, 1m context window, very fast inference, ideal for simple tasks at scale. It excels at chatbots, classification, cost-sensitive, high-volume 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:

  • Ultra-low pricing
  • 1M context window
  • Very fast inference
  • Ideal for simple tasks at scale

Best for:

chatbotsclassificationcost-sensitivehigh-volume

Frequently Asked Questions

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