Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs o4-mini

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index. o4-mini costs 3.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 53 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.1

Rank #81 Confirmed

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 53 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 6 categories and o4-mini in 4 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 66.5 to 54.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is SWE-bench Verified (bash only): 71.4% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 45% for o4-mini.
  • o4-mini is cheaper at $1.10 / $4.40 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
ProviderAnthropicOpenAI
Noometry Index44.141.6
Released2025-09-292025-04-16
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window200K200K
Max output64K100K
Input $ / M tokens$3$1.10
Output $ / M tokens$15$4.40
Results tracked7360

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.3 (#61), o4-mini: 40.9 (#127)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%45%
GSO14.7%3.6%
WeirdML47.7%52.6%
LMArena Coding14891368
ALE-Bench796.15826.17
AlgoTune1.521.72
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
Aider Polyglot—72%
LMArena WebDev1393—
SWE-bench Multilingual67%—
SciCode44.7%—
CadEval—62%

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.3 (#32), o4-mini: 32.6 (#61)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard73.2%53.2%
GDPval42.5%25.3%
METR Time Horizons67.4%63.9%
Terminal-Bench46.5%—
Remote Labor Index2.1%—
τ²-bench Airline72%—
τ²-bench Banking25.3%—
τ²-bench Retail72.4%—
τ²-bench Telecom84.9%—
Cybench60%—
DeepResearch Bench52.6%—
OSWorld62.9%—
LMArena Search1159—
Vending-Bench 23,839—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#125), o4-mini: 24.6 (#162)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
ARC-AGI-213.6%6.1%
SimpleBench54.3%38.7%
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%67.6%
ARC-AGI-163.7%58.7%
CritPt1.1%0.6%
Chess Puzzles12%26%
EnigmaEval6%9.2%
LMArena Hard Prompts14621351
Mystery Game Puzzles17%5%
DTBench83.2%77.6%
LMCA38.8%26.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index146.84145.64
ForecastBench61.961.8
NYT Connections (extended)37.3%—
EBR-Bench2.4%—

Math o4-mini leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 32.3 (#216), o4-mini: 40.8 (#89)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)23.9%36.1%
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%4.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%81.7%
Omni-MATH55.3%72%
LMArena Math14491389
MATH Level 597.7%97.8%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)15.2%24.8%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%6.3%
ProofBench19%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#76), o4-mini: 43.6 (#91)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
GPQA Diamond82.3%79.6%
Humanity's Last Exam13.7%18.1%
SimpleQA Verified30.7%19.6%
MMLU-Pro86.9%82%
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%18.6%
GPQA (HELM)68.6%73.5%
LMArena Expert14821343
Confabulations—15.8%

Multimodal o4-mini leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.8 (#89), o4-mini: 40.2 (#49)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
VPCT39.8%57.5%
LMArena Vision—1194
GeoBench—64%
LMArena Document1450—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.4 (#69), o4-mini: 47.0 (#154)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
LMArena Non-English14251337
LMArena Chinese14591354
LMArena French14581364
LMArena German14271336
LMArena Japanese13901308
LMArena Korean14031312
LMArena Russian14371334
LMArena Spanish14571347

Instruction Following Too close to call

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.0 (#78), o4-mini: 75.2 (#68)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
IFEval85%92.8%
LMArena Instruction Following14591321

Long Context Too close to call

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#46), o4-mini: 45.5 (#33)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
LMArena Longer Query14761315
Fiction.LiveBench—77.8%

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.5 (#34), o4-mini: 54.0 (#152)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5o4-mini
LMArena Text14391353
LMArena Creative Writing14421294
WildBench85.4%85.4%
LMArena Multi-Turn14651350
Short-Story Creative Writing—75%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1678—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than o4-mini?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index. o4-mini costs 3.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or o4-mini?

o4-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or o4-mini better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.3 versus 40.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 200K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and o4-mini share?

53 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.

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