LLMversus

Claude Sonnet 4 vs Phi-3.5 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Sep 14, 2026By LLMversusUpdated September 17, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare Claude Sonnet 4 and Phi-3.5 Mini across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Sonnet 4Phi-3.5 Mini
ProviderAnthropicMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$2.00$0.130
Output Price / 1M tokens$10.00$0.520
Context Window
200K
128K
Max Output Tokens
64,000
4,096
Arena ELO
1,473
1,160
Coding ELO
1,473
1,165
TTFT (ms)
320
150
Tokens/sec
78
100
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesNo
When to Use Claude Sonnet 4

Claude Sonnet 4 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 Phi-3.5 Mini

Phi-3.5 Mini excels at cost-effective, fast-inference tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivefast-inference

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