Claude Sonnet 4 vs GPT-4o Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

GPT-4o Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. Claude Sonnet 4 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1305 vs 1200. GPT-4o Mini is faster at 120 tokens/sec vs 78 tokens/sec. Claude Sonnet 4 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1280 vs 1220. Claude Sonnet 4 offers a larger 200K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Sonnet 4GPT-4o Mini
ProviderAnthropicOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$3.00$0.150
Output Price / 1M tokens$15.00$0.600
Context Window200K128K
Max Output Tokens64,00016,384
Arena ELO1,2801,220
Coding ELO1,3051,200
TTFT (ms)320180
Tokens/sec78120
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. Its 200K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

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

Best for:

codinganalysislong-contextagents
When to Use GPT-4o Mini

Choose GPT-4o Mini when you need: extremely affordable pricing, fast response times, strong for its price tier, good multimodal support. It excels at chatbots, lightweight-tasks, cost-sensitive tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Extremely affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Strong for its price tier
  • Good multimodal support

Best for:

chatbotslightweight-taskscost-sensitive

Frequently Asked Questions

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