Claude 3 Opus vs GPT-4.1

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

Claude 3 Opus is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 53 to 43. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 3 Opus's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 61.6 against 26.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 10 to 54.6. GPT-4.1 does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

GPT-4.1 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for Claude 3 Opus.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 3 Opus if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-4.1 only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 1M context window.

Knowledge

GPT-4.1

Claude 3 Opus

50.2

GPT-4.1

78.3

61
MMLU
90.2
61
GPQA
66.3
59
SuperGPQA
-
57
OpenBookQA
-
62
MMLU-Pro
-
1
HLE
-

Coding

GPT-4.1

Claude 3 Opus

27.7

GPT-4.1

54.6

53
HumanEval
-
10
SWE-bench Verified
54.6
20
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

Claude 3 Opus

Claude 3 Opus

61.6

GPT-4.1

26.4

61
AIME 2023
-
63
AIME 2024
26.4
62
AIME 2025
-
57
HMMT Feb 2023
-
59
HMMT Feb 2024
-
58
HMMT Feb 2025
-
60
BRUMO 2025
-
73
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude 3 Opus
59
SimpleQA
-
57
MuSR
-
74
BBH
-

Instruction Following

GPT-4.1

Claude 3 Opus

77

GPT-4.1

87.4

77
IFEval
87.4

Multilingual

Claude 3 Opus
73
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 3 Opus or GPT-4.1?

Claude 3 Opus is ahead overall, 53 to 43. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 10 and 54.6.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 3 Opus or GPT-4.1?

GPT-4.1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 50.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 3 Opus or GPT-4.1?

GPT-4.1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 54.6 versus 27.7. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude 3 Opus or GPT-4.1?

Claude 3 Opus has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 61.6 versus 26.4. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude 3 Opus or GPT-4.1?

GPT-4.1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87.4 versus 77. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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