Claude 4 Sonnet vs GPT-5 nano

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

Claude 4 Sonnet is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 67 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

GPT-5 nano is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 4 Sonnet 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-5 nano gives you the larger context window at 400K, compared with 200K for Claude 4 Sonnet.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 4 Sonnet if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-5 nano only becomes the better choice if mathematics is the priority or you need the larger 400K context window.

Knowledge

GPT-5 nano

Claude 4 Sonnet

62.2

GPT-5 nano

71.2

73
MMLU
-
73
GPQA
71.2
71
SuperGPQA
-
69
OpenBookQA
-
75
MMLU-Pro
-
12
HLE
-

Coding

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

Mathematics

GPT-5 nano

Claude 4 Sonnet

73.1

GPT-5 nano

85.2

73
AIME 2023
-
75
AIME 2024
-
74
AIME 2025
85.2
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

Claude 4 Sonnet
83
IFEval
-

Multilingual

Claude 4 Sonnet
84
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 4 Sonnet or GPT-5 nano?

Claude 4 Sonnet is ahead overall, 67 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is AIME 2025, where the scores are 74 and 85.2.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 4 Sonnet or GPT-5 nano?

GPT-5 nano has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.2 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-5 nano?

GPT-5 nano has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 85.2 versus 73.1. Inside this category, AIME 2025 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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