# Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-4.1 mini

> Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 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's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-4-1-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 31

## Summary

- They share 31 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 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 leads 66.1 to 23.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3): 65.6% for Claude Sonnet 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.
- GPT-4.1 mini accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 1M.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 54.5 | 33.5 |
| Rank | 26 | 232 |
| Context | 1M | 1.05M |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $10 | $1.60 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#20)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 30.4 (#286)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 53.6% | 40.4% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | 37.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1367 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 23.9% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 32.4% |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1540 | — |
| GSO | 37.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 48.9% |
| CadEval | — | 16% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.7 (#16)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 33.0 (#52)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 50.5% |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 5: 48.2 (#37)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 10.9 (#335)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 16.9% | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | 7% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1349 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | 7% |
| DTBench | 92.5% | 68.8% |
| LMCA | 50% | 21.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.34 | 135.01 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 0% |
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 48.6% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 3.5% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 5: 66.1 (#21)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 23.1 (#264)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | 6.7% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | 44.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1343 |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | — |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 49.1% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 87.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 4.5% |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 5: 55.7 (#42)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#183)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 65.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | 12.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1491 | 1338 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 61.4% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#26)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 35.2 (#77)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1275 | 1181 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 5: 54.0 (#55)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 45.9 (#161)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1318 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1475 | 1329 |
| LMArena French | 1457 | 1357 |
| LMArena German | 1448 | 1349 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1291 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1298 |
| LMArena Russian | 1452 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1436 | 1319 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 5: 76.6 (#39)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 73.9 (#113)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1453 | 1332 |
| IFEval | — | 90.4% |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#53)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#270)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1464 | 1344 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 44.4% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 5: 69.4 (#24)
- GPT-4.1 mini: 48.8 (#193)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-4.1 mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1443 | 1341 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1300 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | 1147 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1354 |
| WildBench | — | 83.8% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than GPT-4.1 mini?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 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's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 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 lists at $2 and $10.

### Is Claude Sonnet 5 or GPT-4.1 mini better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 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 and GPT-4.1 mini share?

31 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and GPT-4.1 mini has 47.