Claude 4 Sonnet vs GPT-5
Head-to-head specifications
| Metric | Claude 4 Sonnet | GPT-5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence Index | 29.0 | 35.0 | -17.1% |
| Coding Index | 37.6 | 37.8 | -0.5% |
| Agentic Index | 16.6 | 25.7 | — |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 922K tokens | — |
| Blended price ($/1M tokens) | $1.20 | $0.79 | +51.9% |
| Access | Proprietary API | Proprietary API | — |
- GPT-5 leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 35.0 vs 29.0).
- GPT-5 is the cheaper model to run at $0.79/1M blended tokens — about 1.5× cheaper.
- Claude 4 Sonnet offers the larger context window (1M tokens), useful for long documents and codebases.
Verdict: Claude 4 Sonnet or GPT-5?
Claude 4 Sonnet advantages
- Context window (+8%)
GPT-5 advantages
- General intelligence (+17%)
- Agentic task performance (+35%)
- Affordability (+34%)
Which should you choose?
- Choose the Claude 4 Sonnet if you work with long documents or large codebases.
- Choose the GPT-5 if you need the strongest overall reasoning and accuracy.
Value for money
GPT-5 offers more intelligence per dollar (1.8× the Intelligence-Index-per-cost of the alternative), making it the stronger value for high-volume use.
Claude 4 Sonnet vs GPT-5: which should you choose?
Claude 4 Sonnet — Anthropic multimodal model with an Intelligence Index of 29, a 1M-token context window and a blended price of $1.2/1M tokens.
GPT-5 — OpenAI multimodal model with an Intelligence Index of 35, a 922K-token context window and a blended price of $0.79/1M tokens.
Claude 4 Sonnet vs GPT-5: GPT-5 scores higher on the Intelligence Index. GPT-5 leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 35.0 vs 29.0). GPT-5 is the cheaper model to run at $0.79/1M blended tokens — about 1.5× cheaper.
Capability: intelligence, coding and agentic work
On the composite Intelligence Index the GPT-5 scores 35.0 versus 29.0. For software development, the Coding Index puts GPT-5 ahead (37.8 vs 37.6). On agentic, multi-step tool-use tasks, GPT-5 measures stronger. Composite indices summarize many evaluations, but always test on your own workload before committing.
Context window and speed
The Claude 4 Sonnet accepts up to 1 million tokens per request, which sets how much documentation, transcript or code it can reason over at once.
Pricing and access
At blended per-token rates, GPT-5 is the cheaper model to run ($0.79 vs $1.20 per 1M tokens). Claude 4 Sonnet is proprietary api and GPT-5 is proprietary api. Open-weight models can be self-hosted, trading per-call cost for infrastructure you manage; for production also weigh rate limits, throughput and data-residency requirements.
The verdict
Both are credible choices in the ai model comparison space; the specification table above lays out every metric so you can weigh the trade-offs that matter to you. Pick the one whose strengths line up with how you will actually use it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Claude 4 Sonnet better than the GPT-5?
GPT-5 is the clearly stronger overall choice, winning most of the dimensions that matter. GPT-5 leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 35.0 vs 29.0).
What is the main difference between the Claude 4 Sonnet and the GPT-5?
GPT-5 leads overall capability (Intelligence Index 35.0 vs 29.0). GPT-5 is the cheaper model to run at $0.79/1M blended tokens — about 1.5× cheaper.
Which is better value?
GPT-5 offers more intelligence per dollar (1.8× the Intelligence-Index-per-cost of the alternative), making it the stronger value for high-volume use.
Which should I choose?
Choose the Claude 4 Sonnet if you work with long documents or large codebases. Choose the GPT-5 if you need the strongest overall reasoning and accuracy.
Methodology
Large language models are compared on independent leaderboard metrics: an Intelligence Index (a composite of reasoning and knowledge evaluations), Coding and Agentic indices where measured, community arena Elo, maximum context window, a blended API price per million tokens (weighted across cache-hit, input and output rates), and measured output speed in tokens per second. Where a model ships multiple reasoning-effort variants, we report its strongest variant. Benchmarks capture only part of real-world quality, which also depends on tool use, latency, safety and task fit — and this space moves quickly, so figures reflect the leaderboard snapshot on the page date.