Claude Opus 4.5 vs GPT-4.1

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

Claude Opus 4.5 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 85 to 43. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Opus 4.5's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 96.1 against 26.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is AIME 2024, 99 to 26.4.

GPT-4.1 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for Claude Opus 4.5.

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-4.1 only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 1M context window.

Knowledge

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

80.8

GPT-4.1

78.3

99
MMLU
90.2
97
GPQA
66.3
95
SuperGPQA
-
93
OpenBookQA
-
81
MMLU-Pro
-
20
HLE
-

Coding

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

72

GPT-4.1

54.6

91
HumanEval
-
68
SWE-bench Verified
54.6
57
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

96.1

GPT-4.1

26.4

99
AIME 2023
-
99
AIME 2024
26.4
98
AIME 2025
-
95
HMMT Feb 2023
-
97
HMMT Feb 2024
-
96
HMMT Feb 2025
-
96
BRUMO 2025
-
89
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

Claude Opus 4.5
95
SimpleQA
-
93
MuSR
-
87
BBH
-

Instruction Following

Claude Opus 4.5

Claude Opus 4.5

90

GPT-4.1

87.4

90
IFEval
87.4

Multilingual

Claude Opus 4.5
90
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-4.1?

Claude Opus 4.5 is ahead overall, 85 to 43. The biggest single separator in this matchup is AIME 2024, where the scores are 99 and 26.4.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-4.1?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.8 versus 78.3. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-4.1?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 54.6. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-4.1?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 96.1 versus 26.4. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-4.1?

Claude Opus 4.5 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 90 versus 87.4. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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