Is Claude 5 Sonnet or GPT-4.1 Mini cheaper?

For a typical request (10,000 input + 2,000 output tokens), GPT-4.1 Mini is cheaper — about 82% less, or roughly $3280 saved per 100,000 requests. Claude 5 Sonnet runs $2/$10 per 1M input/output tokens; GPT-4.1 Mini runs $0.4/$1.6.

Which has the larger context window?

GPT-4.1 Mini, at 1,047,576 tokens versus 1,000,000.

How accurate are these token counts?

Claude 5 Sonnet: Approximated with cl100k_base — drift typically <2% on English and code. GPT-4.1 Mini: Exact tokenization via the canonical OpenAI vocab (o200k_base). The dollar math itself is exact once the token count is known.

Claude 5 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1 Mini: pricing & cost comparison

On input tokens, GPT-4.1 Mini is the cheaper of the two — 80% less per million ($2 vs $0.4). On output, GPT-4.1 Mini is 84% cheaper ($10 vs $1.6) — and since output is usually the dominant cost driver, that gap matters more than it looks.

Side by side

	Claude 5 Sonnet	GPT-4.1 Mini
Input / 1M tokens	$2	$0.4
Output / 1M tokens	$10	$1.6
Context window	1,000,000	1,047,576
Token-count accuracy	±2%	exact
Cost — 10,000 input + 2,000 output tokens	$0.04	$0.0072

What a real request costs

Take a representative turn — 10,000 input + 2,000 output tokens. Claude 5 Sonnet comes to $0.04, GPT-4.1 Mini to $0.0072. Across 100,000 requests that's a $3280 swing in favour of GPT-4.1 Mini. To run the numbers on your actual prompt, paste it into the calculator and toggle Compare across all models.

Different leagues

These two sit in different price tiers — Claude 5 Sonnet runs roughly 6× the per-request cost of GPT-4.1 Mini on the worked example — so they rarely compete for the same job. Reach for GPT-4.1 Mini on high-volume, latency-sensitive work (classification, extraction, routing) and Claude 5 Sonnet only where the harder reasoning earns its price. They're different vendors, so expect a different API and tokenizer: the OpenAI side counts exactly; the other lands within a few percent — budget a small calibration buffer when you switch.

See the full breakdown on the dedicated pages for Claude 5 Sonnet and GPT-4.1 Mini.

FAQ

Is Claude 5 Sonnet or GPT-4.1 Mini cheaper?: For a typical request (10,000 input + 2,000 output tokens), GPT-4.1 Mini is cheaper — about 82% less, or roughly $3280 saved per 100,000 requests. Claude 5 Sonnet runs $2/$10 per 1M input/output tokens; GPT-4.1 Mini runs $0.4/$1.6.
Which has the larger context window?: GPT-4.1 Mini, at 1,047,576 tokens versus 1,000,000.
How accurate are these token counts?: Claude 5 Sonnet: Approximated with cl100k_base — drift typically <2% on English and code. GPT-4.1 Mini: Exact tokenization via the canonical OpenAI vocab (o200k_base). The dollar math itself is exact once the token count is known.

Both prices are computed from tokenmath's verified pricing table. Rates sourced from platform.claude.com and openai.com, verified 2026-07-06. Vendor pricing changes often — confirm before you commit.