Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs GPT-4.1 mini
Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.5 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4.1 mini costs 5.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 7 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in 6 categories and GPT-4.1 mini in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 88.7 to 23.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3): 88.8% for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 6.7% for GPT-4.1 mini.
- GPT-4.1 mini is cheaper at $0.40 / $1.60 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- GPT-4.1 mini accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 1M.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 60.5 | 33.5 |
| Released | 2026-09-28 | 2025-04-14 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 1.05M |
| Max output | 128K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.40 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $10 | $1.60 |
| Results tracked | 16 | 47 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 65.5 (#6), GPT-4.1 mini: 30.4 (#286)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 61% | 40.4% |
| FrontierCode | 52.1% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 23.9% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 32.4% |
| CursorBench | 55.5% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1699 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 61.9% | — |
| WeirdML | — | 37.6% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 48.9% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1367 |
| CadEval | — | 16% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,819 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 44.9 (#14), GPT-4.1 mini: 33.0 (#52)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 75.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 50.5% |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 52.4 (#29), GPT-4.1 mini: 10.9 (#335)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 31.4% | 0% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 65% | 7% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 48.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 3.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 7% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1349 |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LMCA | — | 21.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 135.01 |
Math Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 88.7 (#4), GPT-4.1 mini: 23.1 (#264)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 88.8% | 6.7% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | 44.7% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 80.5% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 49.1% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1343 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 87.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 4.5% |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#11), GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#183)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 95.6% | 65.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 46.5% | 12.7% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 61.4% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1338 |
Multimodal Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5.5: 53.2 (#5), GPT-4.1 mini: 35.2 (#77)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1181 |
| Furniture Assembly | 75% | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5.5: —, GPT-4.1 mini: 45.9 (#161)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1318 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1329 |
| LMArena French | — | 1357 |
| LMArena German | — | 1349 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1291 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1298 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1319 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5.5: —, GPT-4.1 mini: 73.9 (#113)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | — | 90.4% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1332 |
Long Context Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5.5: —, GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#270)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 44.4% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1344 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5.5: —, GPT-4.1 mini: 48.8 (#193)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1341 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1300 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1147 |
| WildBench | — | 83.8% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1354 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 better than GPT-4.1 mini?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.5 to 33.5 on the Noometry Index. GPT-4.1 mini costs 5.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or GPT-4.1 mini?
GPT-4.1 mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $1.60 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5.5 lists at $2 and $10.
Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 or GPT-4.1 mini better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 65.5 versus 30.4 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
GPT-4.1 mini does, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-4.1 mini share?
7 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5.5 has 16 scored results on Noometry and GPT-4.1 mini has 47.