ModelRefs / Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs GPT-4.1 Mini
Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs GPT-4.1 Mini
Claude Sonnet 4.5 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 Sonnet 4.5: Claude Sonnet 4.5 is Anthropic's balanced frontier model, designed for complex reasoning, coding, and agentic tasks while maintaining production-grade speed. It builds on the Claude 4 family's emphasis on honesty and reduced hallucination rates.
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 Sonnet 4.5 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 Sonnet 4.5 vs GPT-4.1 Mini at a glance
| Attribute | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | GPT-4.1 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Released | 2025-09-29 | 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 Sonnet 4.5 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 Sonnet 4.5 vs GPT-4.1 Mini.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or GPT-4.1 Mini?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-4.1 Mini target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 cheaper than GPT-4.1 Mini?
Compare $0.00300 vs $0.00040 on this page.