Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.
GPT-4.1 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 43 to 39. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
GPT-4.1's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 78.3 against 34. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 90.2 to 38. Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking does hit back in mathematics, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking is the reasoning model in the pair, while GPT-4.1 is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. GPT-4.1 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking.
Pick GPT-4.1 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking only becomes the better choice if mathematics is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
GPT-4.1
78.3
Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
34
GPT-4.1
54.6
Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
21.7
GPT-4.1
26.4
Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
40.1
GPT-4.1
87.4
Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
66
GPT-4.1 is ahead overall, 43 to 39. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 90.2 and 38.
GPT-4.1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 34. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-4.1 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 54.6 versus 21.7. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 40.1 versus 26.4. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
GPT-4.1 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87.4 versus 66. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Get notified when new models drop, benchmark scores change, or the leaderboard shifts. One email per week.
Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. We only store derived location metadata for consent routing.