ModelRefs / Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs o4 Mini
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs o4 Mini
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs o4 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.
o4 Mini: o4 Mini is OpenAI's efficient reasoning model, adding vision support to the mini reasoning tier for agentic tasks needing both image understanding and step-by-step logic at low cost per task. It is now deprecated: OpenAI gives the o4-mini-2025-04-16 snapshot and the o4-mini alias a shutdown date of 23 October 2026, with gpt-5.6-terra as the substitute.
Context window: Claude 3.5 Sonnet accepts up to 200,000 tokens, o4 Mini up to 200,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs o4 Mini at a glance
| Attribute | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | o4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Released | 2024-06-20 | 2025-04-16 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 200,000 tokens |
| Input price | $3/M tokens | $1.1/M tokens |
| Output price | $15/M tokens | $4.4/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%, o4 Mini 63%. o4 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 o4 Mini.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or o4 Mini?
Claude 3.5 Sonnet and o4 Mini target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet cheaper than o4 Mini?
Compare $0.00300 vs $0.00110 on this page.