Which model is better: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or OpenAI o4-mini?
OpenAI o4-mini is 63.3% cheaper for input tokens ($1.10 vs. $3.00 per 1M tokens) and $4.40 vs. $15.00 for output tokens (2.7x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Claude 4.5 Sonnet delivers lower response latency at 380ms TTFT (300ms faster than OpenAI o4-mini) with 84 vs. 125 tok/s throughput. Claude 4.5 Sonnet leads coding evaluations at 75.8% SWE-bench Verified vs. 68.1% for OpenAI o4-mini and 84.2% vs. 81.4% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.
Zero-Shot RAG Verified
Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)
Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.
Metric / Dimension
Claude 4.5 Sonnet
OpenAI o4-mini
Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens
$3.00
$1.10
OpenAI o4-mini is 2.7x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens
$15.00
$4.40
OpenAI o4-mini (70.7% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M
$0.300
$0.275
OpenAI o4-mini is 1.1x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M
$3.75
$1.10
OpenAI o4-mini is 3.4x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output)
205k (64k out)
205k (100k out)
Equal Context Window
Avg TTFT Response Latency
380ms
680ms
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (300ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput)
84 tok/s
125 tok/s
OpenAI o4-mini (+41 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding)
75.8%
68.1%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+7.7% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM)
84.2%
81.4%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+2.8% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline)
90.4%
85.6%
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (+4.8% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic)
97.5%
97.8%
OpenAI o4-mini (+0.3% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR)
56.5 / 100
63.7 / 100
OpenAI o4-mini (+7.2 pts)
Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster
Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.
Which is cheaper: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or OpenAI o4-mini?
OpenAI o4-mini is cheaper at $1.10/1M input tokens ($4.40/1M output) compared to $3.00/1M input ($15.00/1M output) for Claude 4.5 Sonnet.
Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Claude 4.5 Sonnet or OpenAI o4-mini?
Claude 4.5 Sonnet delivers faster first-token latency at 380ms TTFT (84 tok/s throughput) compared to 680ms TTFT (125 tok/s) for OpenAI o4-mini.
How do Claude 4.5 Sonnet and OpenAI o4-mini compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Claude 4.5 Sonnet scores 75.8% versus 68.1% for OpenAI o4-mini. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Claude 4.5 Sonnet scores 84.2% versus 81.4% for OpenAI o4-mini (and 97.5% vs 97.8% on MATH-500).
When should you choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet?
Choose Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Anthropic) for end-to-end autonomous coding agents, complex multi-file debugging, browser/GUI automation, and high-precision technical writing — offering a 204k context window, 380ms TTFT, and $3.00/1M input pricing ($0.300/1M cached reads).
When should you choose OpenAI o4-mini?
Choose OpenAI o4-mini (OpenAI) for automated PR review, high-volume agentic coding loops, SQL/data analysis, and visual document reasoning — offering a 204k context window, 680ms TTFT, and $1.10/1M input pricing ($0.275/1M cached reads).
