| Signal | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Delta | o4 Mini |
|---|---|---|---|
Capabilities | 100 | -- | |
Benchmarks | 82 | -3 | |
Pricing | 85 | -11 | |
Context window size | 95 | +11 | |
Recency | 99 | +30 | |
Output Capacity | 80 | -3 | |
| Overall Result | 2 wins | of 6 | 3 wins |
Score History
83.4
current score
o4 Mini
right now
85.2
current score
Anthropic
OpenAI
o4 Mini saves you $720.00/month
That's $8640.00/year compared to Claude Sonnet 4.5 at your current usage level of 100K calls/month.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | o4 Mini | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall Score | 83 | 85 | o4 Mini |
| Rank | #18 | #16 | o4 Mini |
| Quality Rank | #18 | #16 | o4 Mini |
| Adoption Rank | #18 | #16 | o4 Mini |
| Parameters | -- | -- | -- |
| Context Window | 1000K | 200K | Claude Sonnet 4.5 |
| Pricing | $3.00/$15.00/M | $1.10/$4.40/M | -- |
| Signal Scores | |||
| Capabilities | 100 | 100 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 |
| Benchmarks | 82 | 85 | o4 Mini |
| Pricing | 85 | 96 | o4 Mini |
| Context window size | 95 | 84 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 |
| Recency | 99 | 69 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 |
| Output Capacity | 80 | 83 | o4 Mini |
Our score (0-100) is driven by benchmark performance (90%) from Arena Elo ratings, MMLU, GPQA, HumanEval, SWE-bench, and 15+ standardized evaluations. Capabilities and context window serve as tiebreakers (10%). Here's what the scores mean for these two models:
Scores 83/100 (rank #18), placing it in the top 94% of all 290 models tracked.
Scores 85/100 (rank #16), placing it in the top 95% of all 290 models tracked.
With only a 2-point gap, these models are in the same performance tier. The practical difference in output quality is minimal - your choice should depend on pricing, latency requirements, and specific feature needs.
o4 Mini offers 69% better value per quality point. At 1M tokens/day, you'd spend $82.50/month with o4 Mini vs $270.00/month with Claude Sonnet 4.5 - a $187.50 monthly difference.
Both models have comparable response speeds. For most applications, the latency difference is negligible.
When latency matters most: Interactive chatbots, IDE code completion, real-time translation, and user-facing applications where response time directly impacts experience. For batch processing, background summarization, or offline analysis, latency is less critical.
Code generation & review
Higher benchmark score (0/100) indicates stronger performance on coding tasks like generating functions, debugging, and refactoring
Customer support chatbot
Faster response time (speed score 0/100) is critical for user-facing chat. o4 Mini also offers lower per-token costs for high-volume support
Long document analysis
Larger context window (1000K tokens) can process longer documents, contracts, and research papers in a single pass
Batch data extraction
Lower output pricing ($4.40/M) reduces costs when processing thousands of records daily
Creative writing & content
Higher overall composite score (85/100) correlates with better nuance, coherence, and style in long-form content
Image understanding & OCR
Supports vision input - can analyze screenshots, diagrams, photos, and scanned documents directly
Claude Sonnet 4.5 and o4 Mini are extremely close in overall performance (only 1.7999999999999972 points apart). Your best choice depends entirely on which specific strengths matter most for your use case.
Best for Quality
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Marginally better benchmark scores; both are excellent
Best for Cost
o4 Mini
69% lower pricing; better value at scale
Best for Reliability
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Higher uptime and faster response speeds
Best for Prototyping
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Stronger community support and better developer experience
Best for Production
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Wider enterprise adoption and proven at scale
by Anthropic
| Capability | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | o4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Vision (Image Input) | ||
| Function Calling | ||
| Streaming | ||
| JSON Mode | ||
| Reasoning | ||
| Web Search | ||
| Image Output |
Anthropic
OpenAI
o4 Mini saves you $16.14/month
That's 69% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.5 at 1,000 tokens/request and 100 requests/day.
Assumes 60% input / 40% output token ratio per request. Actual costs may vary based on your usage pattern.
| Parameter | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | o4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Context Window | 1M | 200K |
| Max Output Tokens | 64,000 | 100,000 |
| Open Source | No | No |
| Created | Sep 29, 2025 | Apr 16, 2025 |
o4 Mini scores 85/100 (rank #16) compared to Claude Sonnet 4.5's 83/100 (rank #18), giving it a 2-point advantage. o4 Mini is the stronger overall choice, though Claude Sonnet 4.5 may excel in specific areas like certain benchmarks.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is ranked #18 and o4 Mini is ranked #16 out of 290+ AI models. Rankings use a composite score combining benchmark performance (90%) from MMLU, GPQA, HumanEval, SWE-bench, and 15+ standardized evaluations, with capabilities and context window as tiebreakers (10%). Scores update hourly.
o4 Mini is cheaper at $4.40/M output tokens vs Claude Sonnet 4.5's $15.00/M output tokens - 3.4x more expensive. Input token pricing: Claude Sonnet 4.5 at $3.00/M vs o4 Mini at $1.10/M.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a larger context window of 1,000,000 tokens compared to o4 Mini's 200,000 tokens. A larger context window means the model can process longer documents and conversations.