Head-to-head comparison across 1benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude 4 Sonnet
51
o3-mini
56
Pick o3-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 4 Sonnet only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
Coding
+23.4 difference
Claude 4 Sonnet
o3-mini
$3 / $15
$1.1 / $4.4
40 t/s
160 t/s
1.33s
7.12s
200K
200K
Pick o3-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude 4 Sonnet only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
o3-mini is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 56 to 51. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude 4 Sonnet is also the more expensive model on tokens at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $1.10 input / $4.40 output per 1M tokens for o3-mini. That is roughly 3.4x on output cost alone. o3-mini 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.
o3-mini is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 56 to 51. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 72.7% and 49.3%.
Claude 4 Sonnet has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72.7 versus 49.3. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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