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

Verdict

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. Claude Sonnet 4 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1305 vs 1130. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 78 tokens/sec. Claude Sonnet 4 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1280 vs 1150. Claude Sonnet 4 offers a larger 200K context window vs 16K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
ProviderAnthropicMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$3.00$0.070
Output Price / 1M tokens$15.00$0.140
Context Window200K16.384K
Max Output Tokens64,0004,096
Arena ELO1,2801,150
Coding ELO1,3051,130
TTFT (ms)320100
Tokens/sec78160
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionYesNo
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 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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