Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking vs GPT-4.1 mini

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

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 39 to 35. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 40.1 against 23.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 38 to 87.5. GPT-4.1 mini does hit back in knowledge, 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 mini 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 mini gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking.

Quick Verdict

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

Knowledge

GPT-4.1 mini

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

34

GPT-4.1 mini

75.9

38
MMLU
87.5
37
GPQA
64.2
35
SuperGPQA
-
33
OpenBookQA
-
53
MMLU-Pro
-
8
HLE
-

Coding

GPT-4.1 mini

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

21.7

GPT-4.1 mini

23.6

30
HumanEval
-
20
SWE-bench Verified
23.6
15
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

40.1

GPT-4.1 mini

23.1

38
AIME 2023
-
40
AIME 2024
23.1
39
AIME 2025
-
34
HMMT Feb 2023
-
36
HMMT Feb 2024
-
35
HMMT Feb 2025
-
37
BRUMO 2025
-
62
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
36
SimpleQA
-
34
MuSR
-
67
BBH
-

Instruction Following

GPT-4.1 mini

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking

66

GPT-4.1 mini

88.5

66
IFEval
88.5

Multilingual

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking
60
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking or GPT-4.1 mini?

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking is ahead overall, 39 to 35. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 38 and 87.5.

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

GPT-4.1 mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.9 versus 34. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

GPT-4.1 mini has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 23.6 versus 21.7. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude 4.1 Opus Thinking has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 40.1 versus 23.1. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

GPT-4.1 mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 88.5 versus 66. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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