# Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs GPT-4.1 mini

> Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 61.9 to 33.6 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.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-5-5-vs-gpt-4-1-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 21

## Summary

- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5.5 scores higher in 10 categories and GPT-4.1 mini in 0 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5.5 leads 87.9 to 24.1.
- 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.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 61.9 | 33.6 |
| Rank | 10 | 240 |
| Context | 1M | 1.05M |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $1.60 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 67.3 (#6)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 30.6 (#293)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 61% | 40.4% |
| LMArena Coding | 1513 | 1367 |
| FrontierCode | 52.1% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 23.9% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 32.4% |
| CursorBench | 55.5% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1774 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 61.9% | — |
| WeirdML | — | 37.6% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 48.9% |
| CadEval | — | 16% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,819 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 45.0 (#16)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 33.3 (#55)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 75.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 50.5% |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 54.0 (#28)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 10.8 (#340)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 31.4% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1495 | 1349 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 65% | 7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 165.03 | 135.01 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 48.6% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 3.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LMCA | — | 21.1% |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 87.9 (#6)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 24.1 (#270)

| 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% |
| LMArena Math | 1510 | 1343 |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 80.5% | — |
| ProofBench | 100% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 49.1% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 87.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 4.5% |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 2.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#12)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#194)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 95.6% | 65.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 46.5% | 12.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1540 | 1338 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 61.4% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 51.5 (#6)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 35.8 (#82)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1289 | 1181 |
| Furniture Assembly | 75% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 55.3 (#30)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 45.7 (#166)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1452 | 1318 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1522 | 1329 |
| LMArena Russian | 1451 | 1324 |
| LMArena French | — | 1358 |
| LMArena German | — | 1351 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1290 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1298 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1319 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 78.3 (#11)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 73.7 (#118)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1495 | 1333 |
| IFEval | — | 90.4% |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 45.9 (#28)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#275)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1498 | 1344 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 44.4% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5.5: 66.0 (#40)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 48.6 (#199)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1471 | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1465 | 1300 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1474 | 1354 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1147 |
| WildBench | — | 83.8% |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 better than GPT-4.1 mini?

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 61.9 to 33.6 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: 67.3 versus 30.6 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?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5.5 has 32 scored results on Noometry and GPT-4.1 mini has 47.