Claude 4 Sonnet vs GPT-4.1 nano

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

Claude 4 Sonnet is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 67 to 23. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 4 Sonnet's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 73.1 against 9.8. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is AIME 2024, 75 to 9.8. GPT-4.1 nano does hit back in knowledge, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

GPT-4.1 nano gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for Claude 4 Sonnet.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 4 Sonnet if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-4.1 nano only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you need the larger 1M context window.

Knowledge

GPT-4.1 nano

Claude 4 Sonnet

62.2

GPT-4.1 nano

65.2

73
MMLU
80.1
73
GPQA
50.3
71
SuperGPQA
-
69
OpenBookQA
-
75
MMLU-Pro
-
12
HLE
-

Coding

Claude 4 Sonnet
65
HumanEval
-
51
SWE-bench Verified
-
36
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

Claude 4 Sonnet

Claude 4 Sonnet

73.1

GPT-4.1 nano

9.8

73
AIME 2023
-
75
AIME 2024
9.8
74
AIME 2025
-
69
HMMT Feb 2023
-
71
HMMT Feb 2024
-
70
HMMT Feb 2025
-
72
BRUMO 2025
-
81
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude 4 Sonnet
71
SimpleQA
-
69
MuSR
-
82
BBH
-

Instruction Following

GPT-4.1 nano

Claude 4 Sonnet

83

GPT-4.1 nano

83.2

83
IFEval
83.2

Multilingual

Claude 4 Sonnet
84
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 4 Sonnet or GPT-4.1 nano?

Claude 4 Sonnet is ahead overall, 67 to 23. The biggest single separator in this matchup is AIME 2024, where the scores are 75 and 9.8.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 4 Sonnet or GPT-4.1 nano?

GPT-4.1 nano has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 65.2 versus 62.2. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude 4 Sonnet or GPT-4.1 nano?

Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 73.1 versus 9.8. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude 4 Sonnet or GPT-4.1 nano?

GPT-4.1 nano has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 83.2 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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