LLMversus

Claude Sonnet 4 vs o3-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 20, 2026By LLMversusUpdated June 14, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

o3-mini is significantly cheaper at $1.10/$4.40 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. o3-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1340 vs 1305. Claude Sonnet 4 is faster at 78 tokens/sec vs 55 tokens/sec. o3-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1310 vs 1280.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Sonnet 4o3-mini
ProviderAnthropicOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$3.00$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens$15.00$4.40
Context Window
200K
128K
Max Output Tokens
64,000
65,536
Arena ELO
1,280
1,280
Coding ELO
1,305
1,285
TTFT (ms)
320
350
Tokens/sec
78
25
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionYesNo
When to Use Claude Sonnet 4

Choose Claude Sonnet 4 when you need: best-in-class coding performance, 200k context window, excellent instruction following. It excels at coding, analysis, long-context, agents tasks.

Strengths:

  • Best-in-class coding performance
  • 200K context window
  • Excellent instruction following

Best for:

codinganalysislong-contextagents
When to Use o3-mini

Choose o3-mini when you need: strong mathematical reasoning, good coding performance, affordable reasoning model, large output window. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Strong reasoning
  • Good math skills
  • Affordable reasoning

Best for:

reasoningmathgeneral-purpose

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Comparisons

Claude Opus 4 vs Claude Sonnet 4Claude Opus 4 vs o3-miniClaude Sonnet 4 vs Gemini 2 5 ProGemini 2 5 Pro vs o3-miniClaude Sonnet 4 vs O3O3 vs o3-miniClaude Sonnet 4 vs Deepseek R1Deepseek R1 vs o3-miniClaude Sonnet 4 vs O1O1 vs o3-miniClaude Sonnet 4 vs Qwen 3 235bo3-mini vs Qwen 3 235bClaude Sonnet 4 vs Gemini Exp 1206Gemini Exp 1206 vs o3-miniClaude Sonnet 4 vs Gpt 4 5Gpt 4 5 vs o3-miniClaude Sonnet 4 vs Groq Deepseek R1Groq Deepseek R1 vs o3-miniClaude Sonnet 4 vs Llama 4 MaverickLlama 4 Maverick vs o3-mini