Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo vs GPT-4.1: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo and GPT-4.1 on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. GPT-4.1 has the stronger average benchmark score; Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo
Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo is a multimodal model from Anthropic. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $15.56 per million input tokens and $63.75 per million output tokens, and averages 82.3 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $15.56 / 1M
- Output
- $63.75 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 82.3
- Open weights
- No
GPT-4.1
GPT-4.1 is a multimodal model from OpenAI. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $15.71 per million input tokens and $64.52 per million output tokens, and averages 82.4 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $15.71 / 1M
- Output
- $64.52 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 82.4
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo | GPT-4.1 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $15.56 | $15.71 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $63.75 | $64.52 | A |
| Context window | 200,000 | 1,000,000 | B |
| Max output | 16,384 | 16,384 | Tie |
| Average score | 82.3 | 82.4 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1458.8 | 1432.4 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo wins 7, GPT-4.1 wins 4, and 1 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo | GPT-4.1 | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 82.1 | 86.2 | 4.1 | GPT-4.1 |
| GPQA Diamond | 79.7 | 76.1 | 3.6 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.9 | 72.2 | 1.7 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo |
| HumanEval | 87.6 | 88.3 | 0.7 | GPT-4.1 |
| MATH-500 | 86.8 | 86.8 | 0.0 | Tie |
| AIME 2025 | 81.4 | 79.9 | 1.5 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 75.5 | 77.8 | 2.3 | GPT-4.1 |
| IFEval | 87.4 | 90.4 | 3.0 | GPT-4.1 |
| TruthfulQA | 82.6 | 81.8 | 0.8 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 91.0 | 90.3 | 0.7 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo |
| MMMU | 77.6 | 76.3 | 1.3 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo |
| Arena Elo | 1458.8 | 1432.4 | 26.4 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo costs about $27.61 per million tokens and GPT-4.1 costs about $27.91. Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo is roughly 1% cheaper than GPT-4.1. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
GPT-4.1 has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo wins 7, GPT-4.1 wins 4, and 1 are tied. On the index average, GPT-4.1 leads Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo by 0.1 points (82.4 versus 82.3).
The price picture favours Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo. The context picture favours GPT-4.1. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with GPT-4.1 for quality-sensitive work and Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
Choose GPT-4.1 if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
FAQ
Is Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo better than GPT-4.1?
On the index average, GPT-4.1 leads Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo by 0.1 points (82.4 versus 82.3). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo wins 7 benchmarks, GPT-4.1 wins 4.
Which is cheaper, Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo or GPT-4.1?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $27.61 per million tokens, versus $27.91 for GPT-4.1.
Which has the larger context window?
GPT-4.1 has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo has 200,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo is proprietary; GPT-4.1 is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with GPT-4.1 for quality-sensitive work and Claude 3.7 Sonnet Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.