Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 5 vs o3-mini
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index. o3-mini costs 2.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 33 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 33 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 9 categories and o3-mini in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 66.2 to 28.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3): 65.6% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 18.6% for o3-mini.
- o3-mini is cheaper at $1.10 / $4.40 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
- Claude Sonnet 5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 200K.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 54.6 | 36.7 |
| Released | 2026-06-29 | 2024-12-20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 200K |
| Max output | 128K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $1.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $10 | $4.40 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 51 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#26), o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 54.3% | 39.8% |
| GSO | 37.3% | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | 68.8% | 43.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1483 | 1378 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.7% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| CursorBench | 34.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1541 | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| CadEval | — | 54% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,463 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.8 (#18), o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 54.5% | — |
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |
| GBAEval | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1194 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,378 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 49.1 (#39), o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 60.6% | 22.8% |
| CritPt | 16.9% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 35% | 17% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1461 | 1366 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 35% | 7% |
| DTBench | 92.5% | 68.8% |
| LMCA | 50% | 19% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 156.21 | 140.34 |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | 59.6 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 75.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 60% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |
Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 66.2 (#27), o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 65.6% | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 29.3% | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.7% | 76.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1467 | 1396 |
| ProofBench | 77% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 55.6 (#47), o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 33.7% | 15.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1490 | 1364 |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#31), o3-mini: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1274 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 24.9% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1466 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 53.8 (#55), o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1431 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1477 | 1379 |
| LMArena French | 1460 | 1334 |
| LMArena German | 1440 | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1422 | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | 1451 | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1437 | 1321 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 76.3 (#41), o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1452 | 1337 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#55), o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads
Claude Sonnet 5: 69.2 (#25), o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1442 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1416 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1454 | 1320 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1794 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1236 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than o3-mini?
Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.6 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index. o3-mini costs 2.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 5 or o3-mini?
o3-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 5 lists at $2 and $10.
Is Claude Sonnet 5 or o3-mini better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 40.8 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and o3-mini share?
33 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.