Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Phi-4 Mini
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 30.4 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 Mini costs 46× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.
MicrosoftSummary
- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 3 categories and Phi-4 Mini in 0 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 48.4 to 24.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 44.7% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 10.8% for Phi-4 Mini.
- Phi-4 Mini is cheaper at $0.075 / $0.30 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Phi-4 Mini has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 44.0 | 30.4 |
| Released | 2025-09-29 | 2024-12-11 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 128K |
| Max output | 64K | 4K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.075 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $0.30 |
| Results tracked | 73 | 3 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.8 (#54), Phi-4 Mini: 27.6 (#312)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 44.7% | 10.8% |
| SWE-bench Verified | 71.3% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 71.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1393 | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 67% | — |
| GSO | 14.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 47.7% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1489 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 796.15 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.52 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.1 (#30), Phi-4 Mini: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 46.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 73.2% | — |
| GDPval | 42.5% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 2.1% | — |
| τ²-bench Airline | 72% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Retail | 72.4% | — |
| τ²-bench Telecom | 84.9% | — |
| Cybench | 60% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 52.6% | — |
| OSWorld | 62.9% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1159 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 67.4% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 3,839 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#113), Phi-4 Mini: 21.7 (#190)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 1.1% | 0% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 13.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 54.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 57.9% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 37.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 63.7% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 12% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 6% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 2.4% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1462 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 17% | — |
| DTBench | 83.2% | — |
| LMCA | 38.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.84 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.9 | — |
Math Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 31.9 (#190), Phi-4 Mini: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 23.9% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 77.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 19% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 55.3% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1448 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 97.7% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 15.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#70), Phi-4 Mini: 24.8 (#261)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12% | 23.5% |
| GPQA Diamond | 82.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 13.7% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 30.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 86.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.6% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1483 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.1 (#84), Phi-4 Mini: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| VPCT | 39.8% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1450 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.6 (#65), Phi-4 Mini: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1425 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1459 | — |
| LMArena French | 1459 | — |
| LMArena German | 1427 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1390 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1403 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1436 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1457 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.2 (#74), Phi-4 Mini: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 85% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1459 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#45), Phi-4 Mini: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1476 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.7 (#33), Phi-4 Mini: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1439 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1442 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1678 | — |
| WildBench | 85.4% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1465 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than Phi-4 Mini?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 30.4 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 Mini costs 46× 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 Phi-4 Mini?
Phi-4 Mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.075 per million input tokens and $0.30 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Phi-4 Mini better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.8 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Phi-4 Mini share?
3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and Phi-4 Mini has 3.