Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.1
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 49.0 on the Noometry Index. GPT-5.1 costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 43 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 43 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 6 categories and GPT-5.1 in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in multimodal, where GPT-5.1 leads 44.8 to 38.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-2: 60.4% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 17.6% for GPT-5.1.
- GPT-5.1 is cheaper at $1.25 / $10 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 400K.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 50.3 | 49.0 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2025-11-13 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 400K |
| Max output | 128K | 128K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $1.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $10 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 63 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), GPT-5.1: 46.4 (#66)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | 68% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1522 | 1395 |
| SciCode | 46.8% | 43.3% |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | 60.8% |
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1454 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | 1,192 |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 66% |
| GSO | — | 13.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 72.5% |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), GPT-5.1: 32.7 (#60)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | 47.6% |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | 42.8% |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | 1199 |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | 1,473 |
| APEX-Agents | 43% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), GPT-5.1: 39.8 (#58)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | 17.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | 72.8% |
| CritPt | 3.1% | 4.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | 32% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | 1457 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | 19% |
| DTBench | 89.9% | 90.1% |
| LMCA | 46.5% | 43.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.24 | 149.64 |
| ForecastBench | 62 | 58.1 |
| SimpleBench | — | 53.2% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| EnigmaEval | — | 11.2% |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 95.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 72.1% |
| LiveBench | — | 78.8% |
Math Too close to call
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), GPT-5.1: 52.2 (#51)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | 88.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1462 | 1447 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | 31% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | 12.5% |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.4% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 94.5% |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), GPT-5.1: 50.6 (#71)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | 87.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | 48% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | 10.9% |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1470 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 23.7% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 57.9% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 44.2% |
Multimodal GPT-5.1 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), GPT-5.1: 44.8 (#19)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | 1250 |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | 1403 |
| VPCT | — | 58.7% |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
Multilingual Too close to call
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), GPT-5.1: 53.8 (#56)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1431 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1495 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | 1450 |
| LMArena German | 1428 | 1438 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1420 | 1453 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1401 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1435 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | 1433 |
Instruction Following GPT-5.1 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), GPT-5.1: 83.9 (#1)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1475 | 1443 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 93.3% |
| IFEval | — | 93.5% |
Long Context GPT-5.1 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), GPT-5.1: 47.6 (#14)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1447 |
| CL-bench | — | 23.7% |
| CL-bench Life | — | 17.3% |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), GPT-5.1: 64.5 (#55)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | GPT-5.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1443 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1427 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1450 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| WildBench | — | 86.3% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 80.2% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than GPT-5.1?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 49.0 on the Noometry Index. GPT-5.1 costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GPT-5.1?
GPT-5.1 is cheaper. It lists at $1.25 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GPT-5.1 better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (46.3 vs 46.4); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 400K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and GPT-5.1 share?
43 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and GPT-5.1 has 63.