Claude 4.1 Opus vs o3-mini

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

Claude 4.1 Opus is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 69 to 56. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 4.1 Opus's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 52 against 49.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 76 to 86.9. o3-mini does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

o3-mini is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 4.1 Opus 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.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 4.1 Opus if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o3-mini only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Knowledge

o3-mini

Claude 4.1 Opus

64

o3-mini

82.1

76
MMLU
86.9
76
GPQA
77.2
74
SuperGPQA
-
72
OpenBookQA
-
75
MMLU-Pro
-
11
HLE
-

Coding

Claude 4.1 Opus

Claude 4.1 Opus

52

o3-mini

49.3

68
HumanEval
-
48
SWE-bench Verified
49.3
40
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

o3-mini

Claude 4.1 Opus

75.8

o3-mini

87.3

76
AIME 2023
-
78
AIME 2024
87.3
77
AIME 2025
-
72
HMMT Feb 2023
-
74
HMMT Feb 2024
-
73
HMMT Feb 2025
-
75
BRUMO 2025
-
81
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude 4.1 Opus
74
SimpleQA
-
72
MuSR
-
81
BBH
-

Instruction Following

o3-mini

Claude 4.1 Opus

83

o3-mini

93.9

83
IFEval
93.9

Multilingual

Claude 4.1 Opus
85
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 4.1 Opus or o3-mini?

Claude 4.1 Opus is ahead overall, 69 to 56. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 76 and 86.9.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 4.1 Opus or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 64. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 4.1 Opus or o3-mini?

Claude 4.1 Opus has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 52 versus 49.3. 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 or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 75.8. 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 or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 83. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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