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Cost and performance comparison

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs GPT-4o Mini

Model AAnthropic

Claude Haiku 4.5

Capability score (editorial)82/100
Cost / 1M Tokens
$2.20
70% in · 30% out mix
≈ $2.42 for the same text, tokenizer included
Value Index (score÷cost)
33.9
Higher = better value
Speed
97/100
Context
200K
Tier
Fast Tier

List price from the Anthropic pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.

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.

Check the source

How we verify prices

Model BOpenAI

GPT-4o Mini

Capability score (editorial)78/100
Cost / 1M Tokens
$0.29
70% in · 30% out mix
Value Index (score÷cost)
273.7
Higher = better value
Speed
97/100
Context
128K
Tier
Fast Tier

List price from the OpenAI pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.

Check the source

How we verify prices

In-depth analysis

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs GPT-4o Mini: Detailed Comparison

Claude Haiku 4.5 is Anthropic's lightweight-tier language model with a 200K-token context window, excelling at data extraction. GPT-4o Mini from OpenAI is a lightweight-tier model supporting 128K tokens in context, with standout performance in data extraction.

Claude Haiku 4.5 costs 8.5x what GPT-4o Mini does for the same text. That is a steep premium, and it buys a 13-point lead on combined coding and reasoning. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how much of your traffic actually needs the harder model — for most workloads the honest answer is a small fraction of it, which is an argument for routing rather than for picking one. Claude Haiku 4.5 is priced at $1.00/M input tokens and $5.00/M output tokens. GPT-4o Mini costs $0.15/M input and $0.60/M output.

Claude Haiku 4.5 turns the same text into about 10% more tokens than GPT-4o Mini, because their tokenizers differ — so comparing list prices per token understates what Claude Haiku 4.5 costs. For the same text, split 70% input and 30% output and counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts it, Claude Haiku 4.5 works out at about $2.42 per million tokens and GPT-4o Mini at $0.29. Every cost figure on this page includes that difference.

On iOPTERA's editorial scores, Claude Haiku 4.5 leads with 83/100 for coding and 82/100 for reasoning, against GPT-4o Mini's 74/100 and 78/100.

Capability breakdown

Across the five core benchmark categories, here is how Claude Haiku 4.5 and GPT-4o Mini stack up head to head:

coding
83
74
reasoning
82
78
data extraction
91
95
creative tasks
82
83
vision/multimodal
80
80

Best model by task

  • coding: Claude Haiku 4.5 wins with 83/100
  • reasoning: Claude Haiku 4.5 wins with 82/100
  • data extraction: GPT-4o Mini wins with 95/100
  • creative tasks: GPT-4o Mini wins with 83/100

Estimated monthly cost at scale

For 10M + 2M tokens of text a month (counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts), Claude Haiku 4.5 runs about $22.00 while GPT-4o Mini runs about $2.70 — GPT-4o Mini saves roughly $19.30 (88%) every month.

What actually decides it

Claude Haiku 4.5 and GPT-4o Mini 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.

Claude Haiku 4.5 and GPT-4o Mini are 15 months apart, which is more than one generation in this market. Benchmark comparisons across that gap flatter the older model: it was measured against the evaluations that existed at the time. Treat GPT-4o Mini's scores as a floor for what it does well and be sceptical of a close-looking result.

Claude Haiku 4.5 carries the larger context window at 200K tokens versus 128K for GPT-4o Mini. The gap is real but not decisive — it matters if your prompts routinely run long, and is irrelevant if they sit where most production prompts sit, well under 100K. Bear in mind that filling a large window is also what makes a request expensive.

Throughput is close enough to ignore — 97/100 versus 97/100. Neither model will feel noticeably quicker in an interactive product, so latency is not a reason to choose between them.

Claude Haiku 4.5 is 8.5x the price of GPT-4o Mini. Reserve it for the requests that actually need it and route the rest to GPT-4o Mini — that hybrid beats either model used alone on cost per useful answer.

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 termClaude Haiku 4.5GPT-4o Mini
List price (input / output)$1.00 / $5.00$0.15 / $0.60
Cached input$0.1010% of the input price$0.07550% of the input price
Batch API50% off input and output50% off input and output
Long promptsNo surcharge across the 200K window—
Input with 80% cache hits$0.28$0.09

With 80% of input served from the cache, GPT-4o Mini costs 71% less than Claude Haiku 4.5 for the same input text, counting each model's tokenizer.The tokenizer factor for Claude Haiku 4.5 is our estimate until it is measured.

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 HaikuGPT-4o MiniWinner

Coding

83
74
A

Reasoning

82
78
A

Extraction

91
95
B

Creative

82
83
B

Vision

80
80
Tied
Claude Haiku 4.5: 2 wins
GPT-4o Mini: 2 wins

Speed Score

97/100vs97/100
ClaudeGPT-4o

Context Window

200Kvs128K
ClaudeGPT-4o

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 Haiku 4.5
$0.44
GPT-4o Mini
$0.06

Business email

One typical email (~200 words)

~270 tokens
Claude Haiku 4.5
$29.70
GPT-4o Mini
$4.05

Code file

50-line Python script

~400 tokens
Claude Haiku 4.5
$44.00
GPT-4o Mini
$6.00

Prices shown are for 100,000 runs of each workload — one run costs a fraction of a cent on both Claude Haiku 4.5 and GPT-4o Mini, 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

30M tokens
Prompt 70%Completion 30%

Claude Haiku 4.5

$72.60/mo

$871.20/yr

$1.00/M input$5.00/M output
Cheaper

GPT-4o Mini

$8.55/mo

$102.60/yr

$0.15/M input$0.60/M output

Annual Savings

$768.60 saved per year

GPT-4o Mini cheaper · $64.05/mo

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