Head-to-head comparison across 4benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Sonnet 4.5
65
MAI-Thinking-1
65
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Sonnet 4.5 unranked · MAI-Thinking-1 #23
Treat this as a split decision. Claude Sonnet 4.5 makes more sense if knowledge is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model; MAI-Thinking-1 is the better fit if mathematics is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
Agentic
+9.3 difference
Coding
+6.2 difference
Knowledge
+13.5 difference
Math
+10.0 difference
Claude Sonnet 4.5
MAI-Thinking-1
$3 / $15
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
200K
256K
Treat this as a split decision. Claude Sonnet 4.5 makes more sense if knowledge is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model; MAI-Thinking-1 is the better fit if mathematics is the priority or you need the larger 256K context window.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MAI-Thinking-1 finish on the same provisional overall score, so this is less about a single winner and more about where the edge shows up. The provisional headline says tie; the benchmark table is where the real choice happens.
MAI-Thinking-1 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude Sonnet 4.5 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. MAI-Thinking-1 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MAI-Thinking-1 are tied on the provisional overall score, so the right pick depends on which category matters most for your use case.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 69.9. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 77.2 versus 71. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
MAI-Thinking-1 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 97 versus 87. Inside this category, AIME 2025 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 55.3 versus 46. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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