Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4 vs Phi-4

Claude Sonnet 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 costs 69× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 24 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4 Anthropic

40.8

Rank #145 Confirmed

Phi-4 Microsoft

31.2

Rank #279 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 24 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher in 8 categories and Phi-4 in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 4 leads 43.3 to 20.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 71.1% for Claude Sonnet 4 and 13.8% for Phi-4.
  • Phi-4 is cheaper at $0.07 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.
  • Claude Sonnet 4 accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 128K.
  • Phi-4 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4 and Phi-4 specifications
Claude Sonnet 4Phi-4
ProviderAnthropicMicrosoft
Noometry Index40.831.2
Released2025-05-222024-12-11
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K128K
Max output64K4K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.07
Output $ / M tokens$15$0.14
Results tracked5837

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 43.5 (#88), Phi-4: 34.4 (#239)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
LMArena Coding14141231
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)64.9%—
Aider Polyglot61.3%—
SciCode40%—
GSO4.9%—
WeirdML46.1%—
BigCodeBench Instruct—45.5%
LiveBench Coding—30.7%
BigCodeBench Complete—55.4%
ALE-Bench655.35—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 38.5 (#31), Phi-4: 22.8 (#128)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—28.8%
TheAgentCompany33.1%—
Cybench35%—
DeepResearch Bench46.6%—
OSWorld43.9%—
BALROG—11.6%
METR Time Horizons62%—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 22.9 (#187), Phi-4: 17.7 (#291)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
LMArena Hard Prompts13721220
Epoch Capabilities Index141.69130.42
ARC-AGI-25.9%—
SimpleBench45.5%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark73%—
ARC-AGI-140%—
CritPt0.3%—
Chess Puzzles—1%
EnigmaEval3.1%—
LiveBench Reasoning—47.8%
DTBench77.1%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—45.2%
LMCA29%—
ForecastBench60.2—
LiveBench—41.6%

Math Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 43.3 (#80), Phi-4: 20.8 (#285)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202571.1%13.8%
LMArena Math13751246
MATH Level 584.4%64.9%
Omni-MATH60.2%—
LiveBench Math—42%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)4.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)0%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 41.8 (#108), Phi-4: 32.6 (#209)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
GPQA Diamond79.2%56.1%
Confabulations13.2%29.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.3%3.7%
LMArena Expert13721203
Humanity's Last Exam7.8%—
MMLU-Pro84.3%—
GPQA (HELM)70.6%—
MMLU—84.8%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4: 26.2 (#121), Phi-4: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
LMArena Vision1191—
GeoBench37%—
VPCT34%—
MindCube44.8%—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 46.7 (#156), Phi-4: 37.2 (#237)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
LMArena Non-English13331197
LMArena Chinese13501212
LMArena French13631224
LMArena German13311222
LMArena Japanese13021158
LMArena Korean12911151
LMArena Russian13551209
LMArena Spanish13571234

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 71.7 (#145), Phi-4: 60.4 (#251)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
LMArena Instruction Following13761201
LiveBench Instruction Following—58.4%
IFEval84%—

Long Context Phi-4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 33.7 (#259), Phi-4: 36.9 (#226)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
LMArena Longer Query13981217
Fiction.LiveBench46.9%—

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4 leads

Claude Sonnet 4: 57.1 (#132), Phi-4: 40.5 (#244)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4Phi-4
LMArena Text13511217
LMArena Creative Writing13451182
Short-Story Creative Writing81.4%62.6%
LMArena Multi-Turn13761206
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1483—
WildBench83.8%—
LiveBench Language—25.6%

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4 better than Phi-4?

Claude Sonnet 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 costs 69× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4 or Phi-4?

Phi-4 is cheaper. It lists at $0.07 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4 or Phi-4 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.5 versus 34.4 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4 does, with 200K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4 and Phi-4 share?

24 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4 has 58 scored results on Noometry and Phi-4 has 37.

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