Claude Sonnet 4 vs Phi-3 Medium: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare Claude Sonnet 4 and Phi-3 Medium across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureClaude Sonnet 4Phi-3 Medium
ProviderAnthropicMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$3.00$0.170
Output Price / 1M tokens$15.00$0.170
Context Window
200K
128K
Max Output Tokens
64,000
4,096
Arena ELO
1,280
1,170
Coding ELO
1,305
1,175
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 Medium

Phi-3 Medium excels at cost-effective, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good instruction following

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose

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