Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-4.1 Nano

Summary from our 12-test suite (scores are our 1–5 tests unless noted):

• Strategic analysis: Claude Sonnet 4.6 5 vs GPT‑4.1 Nano 2 — Sonnet wins and ranks tied for 1st of 54 (tied with 25 others). This matters for tasks requiring nuanced tradeoffs and numeric reasoning.
• Creative problem solving: Sonnet 5 vs Nano 2 — Sonnet tied for 1st of 54 (tied with 7); expect more non‑obvious, feasible ideas from Sonnet.
• Tool calling: Sonnet 5 vs Nano 4 — Sonnet tied for 1st of 54 (tied with 16) vs Nano rank 18 of 54; Sonnet selects functions, arguments and sequencing more accurately in our tests.
• Classification: Sonnet 4 vs Nano 3 — Sonnet tied for 1st of 53 (tied with 29); better for routing and labeling.
• Long context: Sonnet 5 vs Nano 4 — Sonnet tied for 1st of 55 (tied with 36) vs Nano rank 38; Sonnet is clearly superior for retrieval and accuracy past 30k tokens.
• Safety calibration: Sonnet 5 vs Nano 2 — Sonnet tied for 1st of 55 (tied with 4) vs Nano rank 12; Sonnet refused harmful prompts more appropriately in our tests.
• Persona consistency & agentic planning: Sonnet 5 in both (tied for 1st across tests) vs Nano 4 and 4 (ranks 38 and 16 respectively); Sonnet maintains character and decomposes goals more reliably.
• Multilingual: Sonnet 5 vs Nano 4 — Sonnet tied for 1st of 55; better parity across languages.
• Structured output: Sonnet 4 vs Nano 5 — Nano wins (tied for 1st of 54 with 24 others); choose Nano if strict JSON/schema adherence is the primary need.
• Constrained rewriting: Sonnet 3 vs Nano 4 — Nano wins (rank 6 of 53); Nano handles tight compression/rewrite limits better in our tests.
• Faithfulness: tie — both scored 5 and are tied for 1st; both stick closely to source material in our testing. External benchmarks (Epoch AI): Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores 75.2% on SWE‑bench Verified (Epoch AI), ranked 4 of 12 in our records; Sonnet scores 85.8% on AIME 2025 (Epoch AI) vs GPT‑4.1 Nano 28.9% (Epoch AI). GPT‑4.1 Nano posts 70% on MATH Level 5 (Epoch AI), rank 11 of 14 in our records. These external scores corroborate Sonnet's strength on complex math/contest reasoning (AIME) and Sonnet's strong software/coding signal on SWE‑bench, while Nano shows specific strengths in structured outputs and some math tests.

Prices (from the payload): Claude Sonnet 4.6 = $3 input / $15 output per 1k tokens; GPT‑4.1 Nano = $0.10 input / $0.40 output per 1k tokens. Assuming a 50/50 input/output token split (typical chat/workflow), cost per 1M total tokens: Sonnet ≈ $9,000 (500k in → $1,500; 500k out → $7,500), GPT‑4.1 Nano ≈ $250 (500k in → $50; 500k out → $200). For 10M tokens/month: Sonnet ≈ $90,000 vs Nano ≈ $2,500. For 100M tokens/month: Sonnet ≈ $900,000 vs Nano ≈ $25,000. The payload lists a priceRatio of 37.5; in realistic 50/50 scenarios Sonnet is ~36× more expensive per 1k tokens. Who should care: teams running high volume (10M+ tokens) or cost‑sensitive consumer apps should strongly prefer GPT‑4.1 Nano; teams that need top accuracy, tool orchestration, long-context reasoning, or strict safety behavior should budget for Sonnet despite the higher cost.

Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you need best-in-class tool-calling, long-context retrieval, safety calibration, agentic planning, or multilingual/creative problem solving — examples: enterprise codebase navigation, multi-step agent workflows, high‑value professional drafting, or long document analysis. Budget for roughly $9k per 1M tokens (50/50 split). Choose GPT‑4.1 Nano if you need a low-cost, low-latency engine for high-volume chat or schema-bound outputs where strict JSON or character-limited rewriting matters — examples: consumer chatbots, high‑traffic summarization services, or pipeline steps that require cheap, fast structured responses. Expect ~ $250 per 1M tokens (50/50 split).