Claude 4 Sonnet vs Claude Opus 4.1

API pricing, context window and capabilities for Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude Opus 4.1, side by side. Prices are the cheapest listed serving route per 1M tokens, from LiteLLM and OpenRouter.

Verdict

computed from the published numbers

Claude 4 Sonnet wins on price. Claude Opus 4.1 wins on intelligence. Benchmark data is unavailable for one or both models.

Price
Claude 4 Sonnet
Terminal-Bench
Not called
Intelligence
Claude Opus 4.1
Context window
Tied

Key takeaways

who wins on what, from the published numbers

Claude 4 Sonnet wins

  • Cheaper input ($3.00 vs $15.00 /1M)
  • Cheaper output ($15.00 vs $75.00 /1M)
  • Higher max output (200K vs 32K)

Claude Opus 4.1 wins

  • More serving providers (4 vs 6)
  • Has reasoning mode
Cheaper overall
Claude 4 Sonnet
$3.00 + $15.00 /1M
Larger context
Tied
More providers
Claude Opus 4.1
6 providers

Pricing & specs

cheapest listed route · per 1M tokens
On-demand listed rates, OpenRouter routed quotes and Vercel reseller quotes. Enterprise commitments can be materially lower.
Claude 4 SonnetClaude Opus 4.1
Input $/1M$3.00via Replicate best$15.00via Anthropic
Output $/1M$15.00via Replicate best$75.00via Anthropic
Context window200K 200K
Max output200K best32K
Serving providers4 6 best
DateFirst listed Jul 2025 Released Aug 5, 2025

Benchmarks

Benchmark scores, side by side
Claude 4 SonnetClaude Opus 4.1
Intelligence16.6 18.6 best
Terminal-Bench36% Not available
GPQA Diamond68% 81% best

Cost calculator

choose a serving route for each side
Input tokens / month
Output tokens / month
Claude 4 Sonnet
via Replicate
$30
Claude Opus 4.1
via Azure
$150

Capabilities

feature support, side by side
FeatureClaude 4 SonnetClaude Opus 4.1
Vision✓✓
Tool use✓✓
Reasoning—✓
Audio——
Prompt caching✓✓
Structured output✓✓
Web search——

Related comparisons

Frequently asked questions

Which is cheaper, Claude 4 Sonnet or Claude Opus 4.1?
Claude 4 Sonnet is cheaper for input ($3.00 vs $15.00 per 1M tokens) from Replicate. Claude 4 Sonnet is cheaper for output ($15.00 vs $75.00 per 1M tokens) from Replicate.
What is the context window difference between Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude Opus 4.1?
Both Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude Opus 4.1 have about a 200K-token context window.
How do Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude Opus 4.1 compare on benchmarks?
On the tracked benchmarks, Claude Opus 4.1 leads on intelligence.
Listed prices from LiteLLM, OpenRouter and Vercel · last checked Sep 22, 2026

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