Which is more cost-effective, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or GPT-4.1?

Based on 1M input + 1M output tokens, Claude 3.5 Sonnet costs $18.00/month versus GPT-4.1 at $10.00/month. The cheaper option depends on your token volume and prompt-to-completion ratio. Use the interactive calculator on this page to enter your exact usage.

How accurate is this cost comparison?

List prices come from each provider's own pricing page and every model page shows when they were last verified. The capability scores are iOPTERA's editorial composites — informed by public benchmarks, not benchmark results themselves; the methodology page explains how they are set.

Which model scores higher on benchmarks?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores 88 in coding and 89 in reasoning benchmarks. GPT-4.1 scores 89 in coding and 90 in reasoning. See the full 5-category breakdown in the Benchmark Comparison section above.

What are the context window sizes of Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4.1?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet supports a 200K-token context window while GPT-4.1 supports 1.0M tokens. A larger context window lets you process more text in a single API call.

Which model is faster for real-time applications?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has a speed score of 95/100 and GPT-4.1 scores 88/100 on our latency benchmark. For interactive chatbots and low-latency tasks, the higher speed score is preferable.

Can I calculate costs for my specific token volume?

Yes. Use the interactive cost calculator on this page. Enter your monthly token volume and adjust the prompt-to-completion ratio. You can also use presets for common scenarios like Customer Support Bots (~30M tokens/month) or Document Summarizers (~15M tokens/month).

Cost and performance comparison

Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1

Model AAnthropic

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Capability score (editorial)89/100

Cost / 1M Tokens: $6.60; 70% in · 30% out mix; ≈ $7.26 for the same text, tokenizer included
Value Index (score÷cost): 12.3; Higher = better value

Speed: 95/100
Context: 200K
Tier: Smart Tier

Last list price before the model was retired.

Its tokenizer produces about 10% more tokens than OpenAI's for the same text, so the real cost runs higher than the list price suggests. This is an estimate: the tokenizer has not been measured yet.

How we verify prices

Model BOpenAI

GPT-4.1

Capability score (editorial)90/100

Cost / 1M Tokens: $3.80; 70% in · 30% out mix
Value Index (score÷cost): 23.7; Higher = better value

Speed: 88/100
Context: 1.0M
Tier: Smart Tier

List price from the OpenAI pricing page, verified September 30, 2026.

Check the source

How we verify prices

In-depth analysis

Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1: Detailed Comparison

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is Anthropic's mid-range-tier language model with a 200K-token context window, excelling at creative tasks. GPT-4.1 from OpenAI is a mid-range-tier model supporting 1.0M tokens in context, with standout performance in data extraction.

GPT-4.1 is both the cheaper and the stronger model here — for the same text it costs 48% less than Claude 3.5 Sonnet and still leads on combined coding and reasoning by 2 points. There is no tradeoff to weigh on this pair: unless you need something specific from Claude 3.5 Sonnet, the cheaper model is simply the better one. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is priced at $3.00/M input tokens and $15.00/M output tokens. GPT-4.1 costs $2.00/M input and $8.00/M output.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet turns the same text into about 10% more tokens than GPT-4.1, because their tokenizers differ — so comparing list prices per token understates what Claude 3.5 Sonnet costs. For the same text, split 70% input and 30% output and counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts it, Claude 3.5 Sonnet works out at about $7.26 per million tokens and GPT-4.1 at $3.80. Every cost figure on this page includes that difference.

On iOPTERA's editorial scores, GPT-4.1 leads with 89/100 for coding and 90/100 for reasoning, against Claude 3.5 Sonnet's 88/100 and 89/100.

Capability breakdown

Across the five core benchmark categories, here is how Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4.1 stack up head to head:

coding

GPT-4.1 leads

reasoning

GPT-4.1 leads

data extraction

GPT-4.1 leads

creative tasks

Claude 3.5 leads

vision/multimodal

GPT-4.1 leads

Best model by task

coding: GPT-4.1 wins with 89/100
reasoning: GPT-4.1 wins with 90/100
data extraction: GPT-4.1 wins with 92/100
creative tasks: Claude 3.5 Sonnet wins with 91/100
vision/multimodal: GPT-4.1 wins with 90/100

Estimated monthly cost at scale

For 10M + 2M tokens of text a month (counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts), Claude 3.5 Sonnet runs about $66.00 while GPT-4.1 runs about $36.00 — GPT-4.1 saves roughly $30.00 (45%) every month.

What actually decides it

Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4.1 come from different labs, which means different tokenizers, different API shapes, and a second vendor relationship. The same English text does not produce the same token count on both, so a price-per-million comparison understates the difference — measure your own prompts on each before treating the headline rates as the full story.

GPT-4.1 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet were released within 10 months of each other, so they are competing on the same evaluations under roughly the same conditions. That makes a direct benchmark comparison meaningful here in a way it usually is not — neither model has the advantage of being measured on a newer, easier set of tests.

The context gap is the largest single difference on this pair: GPT-4.1 takes 1.0M tokens against 200K for Claude 3.5 Sonnet, roughly 5.2x. That is the difference between feeding in a whole repository or a full contract set and having to chunk it. If your work involves documents you cannot split cleanly, this decides it on its own.

Throughput is close enough to ignore — 95/100 versus 88/100. Neither model will feel noticeably quicker in an interactive product, so latency is not a reason to choose between them.

GPT-4.1 wins this comparison outright — cheaper and stronger. Choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet only if it has a specific capability you need; on price and benchmarks it is behind on both.

What you actually pay

The list price is only the start. Prompt caching, batch processing and long prompts change the bill, and each provider sets them differently. Prices per 1M tokens.

Pricing terms beyond the list price, per 1M tokens
Pricing term	Claude 3.5 Sonnet	GPT-4.1
List price (input / output)	$3.00 / $15.00	$2.00 / $8.00
Cached input	—	$0.5025% of the input price
Batch API	—	50% off input and output
Long prompts	—	No surcharge across the 1.05M window
Input with 80% cache hits	—	$0.80

The last row assumes 80% of input tokens are read from the cache, as in a chat app that re-sends a long system prompt or RAG over the same documents. Cache-write and storage charges are not included.

Claude also bills cache writes: 1.25× the input price for a 5-minute cache, 2× for one hour.

Checked on October 8, 2026 against the pricing pages of Anthropic, OpenAI.

Capability scores

iOPTERA editorial scores across 5 categories — informed by public benchmarks, not measured by us

CategoryClaude 3.5GPT-4.1Winner

Coding

Reasoning

Extraction

Creative

Vision

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 1 wins

GPT-4.1: 4 wins

GPT-4.1 leads overall

Speed Score

95/100vs88/100

ClaudeGPT-4.1

Context Window

200Kvs1048K

ClaudeGPT-4.1

What Is a Token?

Models don't read words — they process tokens.

A token is roughly 4 characters of English text (~¾ of a word). Your API bill is priced per million tokens — understanding this directly reduces your costs.

Short phrase

"Hello, world!"

4 tokens

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: $1.32
GPT-4.1: $0.80

Business email

One typical email (~200 words)

~270 tokens

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: $89.10
GPT-4.1: $54.00

Code file

50-line Python script

~400 tokens

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: $132.00
GPT-4.1: $80.00

Prices shown are for 100,000 runs of each workload — one run costs a fraction of a cent on both Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4.1, so the number only becomes meaningful at production volume. Input tokens only; add your output volume in the calculator below.

How to check your token usage

response.usage.total_tokens

Every API response includes a usage object. Sum total_tokens across all calls to get your monthly figure, then use the calculator below.

Your Cost Calculator

Enter your actual monthly token usage to see real savings

Quick Presets

Monthly Token Volume

30M tokens

Prompt / Completion Split

Prompt 70%Completion 30%

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

$217.80/mo

$2,613.60/yr

$3.00/M input$15.00/M output

Cheaper

GPT-4.1

$114.00/mo

$1,368.00/yr

$2.00/M input$8.00/M output

Annual Savings

$1,245.60 saved per year

GPT-4.1 cheaper · $103.80/mo

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