ModelRefs / Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1 Mini
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1 Mini
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1 Mini: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Claude 3.5 Sonnet is Anthropic's mid-2024 balanced model, the release that introduced computer use and anchored Anthropic's agentic-coding positioning for its generation across a 200,000-token context window. It is now retired: Anthropic deprecated both the claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620 and claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022 snapshots on 13 August 2025 and retired them on 28 October 2025 on Anthropic-operated platforms, naming Claude Sonnet 5.5 as the replacement.
GPT-4.1 Mini: GPT-4.1 Mini is OpenAI's April 2025 smaller, faster GPT-4.1 variant, carrying the same 1,047,576-token context window, 32,768-token maximum output and June 2024 knowledge cutoff as the full model at roughly a fifth of its input price. It accepts text and image input and, like GPT-4.1, answers without a reasoning step. OpenAI has since deprecated it, scheduling the gpt-4.1-mini-2025-04-14 snapshot to shut down on 14 January 2027 with gpt-6-luna as the replacement.
Context window: Claude 3.5 Sonnet accepts up to 200,000 tokens, GPT-4.1 Mini up to 1,000,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1 Mini at a glance
| Attribute | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | GPT-4.1 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Released | 2024-06-20 | 2025-04-14 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Input price | $3/M tokens | $0.4/M tokens |
| Output price | $15/M tokens | $1.6/M tokens |
| Licence | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | No, hosted only |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
Where they differ most
- Cost Efficiency: Claude 3.5 Sonnet 37%, GPT-4.1 Mini 80%. GPT-4.1 Mini leads on this dimension.
Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1 Mini.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or GPT-4.1 Mini?
Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4.1 Mini target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet cheaper than GPT-4.1 Mini?
Compare $0.00300 vs $0.00040 on this page.