Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo vs GPT-5.1 Vision: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo and GPT-5.1 Vision on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo has the stronger average benchmark score; GPT-5.1 Vision is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo is a frontier model from Anthropic. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $18.37 per million input tokens and $81.65 per million output tokens, and averages 85.9 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $18.37 / 1M
- Output
- $81.65 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 85.9
- Open weights
- No
GPT-5.1 Vision
GPT-5.1 Vision is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $17.76 per million input tokens and $80.59 per million output tokens, and averages 84.8 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $17.76 / 1M
- Output
- $80.59 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 84.8
- Open weights
- No
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo | GPT-5.1 Vision | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $18.37 | $17.76 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $81.65 | $80.59 | B |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 400,000 | A |
| Max output | 65,536 | 16,384 | A |
| Average score | 85.9 | 84.8 | A |
| Arena Elo | 1461.7 | 1462.4 | B |
| Open weights | No | No | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 8, GPT-5.1 Vision wins 4, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo | GPT-5.1 Vision | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 87.2 | 85.5 | 1.7 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| GPQA Diamond | 83.7 | 78.7 | 5.0 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2 | 73.6 | 1.6 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| HumanEval | 90.4 | 89.6 | 0.8 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 88.0 | 89.1 | 1.1 | GPT-5.1 Vision |
| AIME 2025 | 87.8 | 82.4 | 5.4 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 78.9 | 77.8 | 1.1 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| IFEval | 91.4 | 92.7 | 1.3 | GPT-5.1 Vision |
| TruthfulQA | 87.7 | 86.9 | 0.8 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 93.9 | 92.1 | 1.8 | Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo |
| MMMU | 81.1 | 83.9 | 2.8 | GPT-5.1 Vision |
| Arena Elo | 1461.7 | 1462.4 | 0.7 | GPT-5.1 Vision |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo costs about $34.19 per million tokens and GPT-5.1 Vision costs about $33.47. GPT-5.1 Vision is roughly 2% cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 400,000 for GPT-5.1 Vision. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 8, GPT-5.1 Vision wins 4, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo leads GPT-5.1 Vision by 1.1 points (85.9 versus 84.8).
The price picture favours GPT-5.1 Vision. The context picture favours Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo. 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 Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo for quality-sensitive work and GPT-5.1 Vision for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
Choose GPT-5.1 Vision if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
FAQ
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo better than GPT-5.1 Vision?
On the index average, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo leads GPT-5.1 Vision by 1.1 points (85.9 versus 84.8). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo wins 8 benchmarks, GPT-5.1 Vision wins 4.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo or GPT-5.1 Vision?
GPT-5.1 Vision is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $33.47 per million tokens, versus $34.19 for Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. GPT-5.1 Vision has 400,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo is proprietary; GPT-5.1 Vision is proprietary.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Claude Sonnet 4.5 Turbo for quality-sensitive work and GPT-5.1 Vision for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.