Claude 3.7 Sonnet vs o3 Vision: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude 3.7 Sonnet and o3 Vision on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. o3 Vision has the stronger average benchmark score; o3 Vision is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is a multimodal model from Anthropic. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $14.91 per million input tokens and $74.27 per million output tokens, and averages 81.6 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.91 / 1M
- Output
- $74.27 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 81.6
- Open weights
- No
o3 Vision
o3 Vision is a multimodal model from OpenAI. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $15.24 per million input tokens and $65.25 per million output tokens, and averages 81.8 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $15.24 / 1M
- Output
- $65.25 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 81.8
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude 3.7 Sonnet | o3 Vision | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.91 | $15.24 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $74.27 | $65.25 | B |
| Context window | 200,000 | 1,000,000 | B |
| Max output | 128,000 | 8,192 | A |
| Average score | 81.6 | 81.8 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1451.9 | 1436.5 | A |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 5, o3 Vision wins 7, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude 3.7 Sonnet | o3 Vision | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 83.5 | 83.6 | 0.1 | o3 Vision |
| GPQA Diamond | 80.2 | 77.8 | 2.4 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| SWE-bench Verified | 70.1 | 71.8 | 1.7 | o3 Vision |
| HumanEval | 85.7 | 85.6 | 0.1 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| MATH-500 | 88.9 | 84.4 | 4.5 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| AIME 2025 | 81.2 | 82.4 | 1.2 | o3 Vision |
| LiveCodeBench | 75.0 | 73.7 | 1.3 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
| IFEval | 88.5 | 89.3 | 0.8 | o3 Vision |
| TruthfulQA | 81.7 | 85.8 | 4.1 | o3 Vision |
| HellaSwag | 87.6 | 89.7 | 2.1 | o3 Vision |
| MMMU | 75.5 | 75.7 | 0.2 | o3 Vision |
| Arena Elo | 1451.9 | 1436.5 | 15.4 | Claude 3.7 Sonnet |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude 3.7 Sonnet costs about $29.75 per million tokens and o3 Vision costs about $27.74. o3 Vision is roughly 7% cheaper than Claude 3.7 Sonnet. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
o3 Vision has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for Claude 3.7 Sonnet. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 5, o3 Vision wins 7, and 0 are tied. On the index average, o3 Vision leads Claude 3.7 Sonnet by 0.2 points (81.8 versus 81.6).
The price picture favours o3 Vision. The context picture favours o3 Vision. 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 o3 Vision for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude 3.7 Sonnet if
- You need the larger 128,000-token output limit.
Choose o3 Vision if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
- The workload needs multi-step reasoning.
FAQ
Is Claude 3.7 Sonnet better than o3 Vision?
On the index average, o3 Vision leads Claude 3.7 Sonnet by 0.2 points (81.8 versus 81.6). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude 3.7 Sonnet wins 5 benchmarks, o3 Vision wins 7.
Which is cheaper, Claude 3.7 Sonnet or o3 Vision?
o3 Vision is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $27.74 per million tokens, versus $29.75 for Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
Which has the larger context window?
o3 Vision has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Claude 3.7 Sonnet has 200,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is proprietary; o3 Vision is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with o3 Vision for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.