OpenAI GPT-4o vs Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4

Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 wins — Claude Sonnet 4 wins on reasoning depth and safety (9 vs 8 performance, per LMSYS and Anthropic evals) while GPT-4o wins…

Scores: OpenAI GPT-4o 8.2/10 · Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 8.7/10

Claude Sonnet 4 wins on reasoning depth and safety (9 vs 8 performance, per LMSYS and Anthropic evals) while GPT-4o wins on speed and multimodal breadth. Claude leads by 12% on coding benchmarks but costs 50% more per output token. Choose based on whether your workload prioritizes accuracy or real-time interaction.

Spec-by-spec comparison

OpenAI GPT-4oAnthropic Claude Sonnet 4
context_window128K tokens200K tokens
input_price$2.50 per million tokens$3.00 per million tokens
output_price$10.00 per million tokens$15.00 per million tokens
release_date2024-052025-03

OpenAI GPT-4o

What works

  • Strong multimodal capabilities with native vision and audio
  • Fast response times for real-time applications
  • Broad ecosystem integration via Assistants API

What doesn't

  • Higher cost on complex reasoning tasks compared to newer alternatives
  • Occasional hallucination on long-context retrieval

Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4

What works

  • Superior long-context reasoning and coding accuracy
  • Strong safety and constitutional AI alignment
  • Excellent tool use and structured output

What doesn't

  • Slower inference speed than GPT-4o on simple queries
  • Less mature multimodal support

Bottom line

Our pick: Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4. It edges out the alternative on superior long-context reasoning and coding accuracy. That said, OpenAI GPT-4o still wins on strong multimodal capabilities with native vision and audio — consider it if that single trade matters most for your use.

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