Head-to-head · multimodal vs multimodal

ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning vs GPT-4.1 Vision: which model should you choose?

We compared ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning and GPT-4.1 Vision on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. GPT-4.1 Vision has the stronger average benchmark score; ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.

Baidu

ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning

ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning is a multimodal model from Baidu. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $14.36 per million input tokens and $78.75 per million output tokens, and averages 79.8 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input: $14.36 / 1M
Output: $78.75 / 1M
Context: 1,000,000
Avg score: 79.8
Open weights: No

Full ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning page

OpenAI

GPT-4.1 Vision

GPT-4.1 Vision is a multimodal model from OpenAI. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $14.88 per million input tokens and $81.24 per million output tokens, and averages 82.0 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input: $14.88 / 1M
Output: $81.24 / 1M
Context: 1,000,000
Avg score: 82.0
Open weights: No

Full GPT-4.1 Vision page

Specification comparison

Spec	ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning	GPT-4.1 Vision	Edge
Input price / 1M	$14.36	$14.88	A
Output price / 1M	$78.75	$81.24	A
Context window	1,000,000	1,000,000	Tie
Max output	8,192	8,192	Tie
Average score	79.8	82.0	B
Arena Elo	1421.5	1451.8	B
Open weights	No	No	Tie

Benchmark comparison

ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning wins 1, GPT-4.1 Vision wins 10, and 1 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

Benchmark	ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning	GPT-4.1 Vision	Gap	Winner
MMLU-Pro	80.6	84.0	3.4	GPT-4.1 Vision
GPQA Diamond	75.7	79.3	3.6	GPT-4.1 Vision
SWE-bench Verified	69.8	72.4	2.6	GPT-4.1 Vision
HumanEval	85.0	86.8	1.8	GPT-4.1 Vision
MATH-500	82.5	87.5	5.0	GPT-4.1 Vision
AIME 2025	78.1	77.2	0.9	ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning
LiveCodeBench	71.9	74.3	2.4	GPT-4.1 Vision
IFEval	88.7	88.7	0.0	Tie
TruthfulQA	82.9	84.4	1.5	GPT-4.1 Vision
HellaSwag	88.0	89.7	1.7	GPT-4.1 Vision
MMMU	74.4	77.5	3.1	GPT-4.1 Vision
Arena Elo	1421.5	1451.8	30.3	GPT-4.1 Vision

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning costs about $30.46 per million tokens and GPT-4.1 Vision costs about $31.47. ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning is roughly 3% cheaper than GPT-4.1 Vision. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.

Both models list a 1,000,000-token context window. That is enough for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning wins 1, GPT-4.1 Vision wins 10, and 1 are tied. On the index average, GPT-4.1 Vision leads ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning by 2.2 points (82.0 versus 79.8).

The price picture favours ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning. The context picture is effectively a tie. 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 Vision for quality-sensitive work and ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.

Choose ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning if

Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
The workload needs multi-step reasoning.

Choose GPT-4.1 Vision if

You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.

FAQ

Is ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning better than GPT-4.1 Vision?

On the index average, GPT-4.1 Vision leads ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning by 2.2 points (82.0 versus 79.8). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning wins 1 benchmarks, GPT-4.1 Vision wins 10.

Which is cheaper, ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning or GPT-4.1 Vision?

ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $30.46 per million tokens, versus $31.47 for GPT-4.1 Vision.

Which has the larger context window?

Both models list a 1,000,000-token context window.

Are these models open weights?

ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning is proprietary; GPT-4.1 Vision is proprietary.

Which should I choose for production?