Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs o4-mini
Claude 3.5 Sonnet (2024) and o4-mini (2025) are frontier-tier reasoning models from Anthropic and OpenAI. Claude 3.5 Sonnet ships a 200k-token context window, while o4-mini ships a 200k-token context window. On MMLU PRO, o4-mini leads by 6 pts. On pricing, o4-mini costs $1/1M input tokens versus $3/1M for the alternative. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
o4-mini is ~200% cheaper at $1/1M; pay for Claude 3.5 Sonnet only for coding workflow support.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | reasoning-heavy apps, multimodal apps, and tool-calling agents | reasoning-heavy apps, multimodal apps, and tool-calling agents |
| Decision fit | Coding, RAG, and Agents | Coding, RAG, and Agents |
| Context window | 200k | 200k |
| Cheapest output | $15/1M tokens | $4/1M tokens |
| Provider routes | 6 tracked | 4 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 5 shared | MMLU PRO leader |
Decision tradeoffs
- Claude 3.5 Sonnet has broader tracked provider coverage for fallback and route flexibility.
- Local decision data tags Claude 3.5 Sonnet for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
- o4-mini holds a shared-benchmark lead on MMLU PRO, ahead by 6 points.
- o4-mini has the lower cheapest tracked output price at $4/1M tokens.
- Local decision data tags o4-mini for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
$6,150
Cheapest tracked route/tier: GCP Vertex AI
o4-mini
$1,800
Cheapest tracked route/tier: Replicate API
Estimated monthly gap: $4,350. Batch, cache, alternate speed tiers, and negotiated pricing are excluded from this local estimate.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on OpenRouter and Replicate API; start route-level A/B tests there.
- o4-mini is $11/1M tokens lower on cheapest tracked output pricing before cache, batch, or negotiated discounts.
- Provider overlap exists on OpenRouter and Replicate API; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Claude 3.5 Sonnet is $11/1M tokens higher on cheapest tracked output pricing, so quality gains need to justify the spend.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2024-06-20 | 2025-04-16 |
| Context window | 200k | 200k |
| Parameters | 70B | — |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Decoder Only |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Openness | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Weights | Not released | Not released |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | Commercial use: conditional | Commercial use: conditional |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2024-04 | 2025-08 |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $3/1M tokens | $1/1M tokens |
| Output price | $15/1M tokens | $4/1M tokens |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | Yes | Yes |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| JSON / Tool use | Yes | Yes |
| Structured outputs | Yes | Yes |
| Code execution | Yes | Yes |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | No | No |
| Parallel agents | No | No |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU PRO | 77.2 | 83.2 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 49.0 | 68.1 |
| LiveCodeBench | 48.7 | 87.3 |
| Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding | 68.3 | 81.6 |
| Aider Polyglot | 51.6 | 72.0 |
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-26. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.