o3-mini vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 Comparison
Comparing o3-mini and Claude Sonnet 4.5 across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
Performance Benchmarks
Comparative analysis across standard metrics
o3-mini outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Claude Sonnet 4.5 is better at 3 benchmarks (GPQA, TAU-bench Airline, TAU-bench Retail).
Claude Sonnet 4.5 significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Arena Performance
Human preference votes
Pricing Analysis
Price comparison per million tokens
For input processing, o3-mini ($1.10/1M tokens) is 2.7x cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.5 ($3.00/1M tokens).
For output processing, o3-mini ($4.40/1M tokens) is 3.4x cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.5 ($15.00/1M tokens).
In conclusion, Claude Sonnet 4.5 is more expensive than o3-mini.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Both models have the same input context window of 200,000 tokens. o3-mini can generate longer responses up to 100,000 tokens, while Claude Sonnet 4.5 is limited to 64,000 tokens.
Input Capabilities
Supported data types and modalities
Claude Sonnet 4.5 supports multimodal inputs, whereas o3-mini does not.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
o3-mini
Claude Sonnet 4.5
License
Usage and distribution terms
Both models are licensed under proprietary licenses.
Both models have usage restrictions defined by their respective organizations.
Proprietary
Closed source
Proprietary
Closed source
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
o3-mini was released on 2025-01-30, while Claude Sonnet 4.5 was released on 2025-09-29.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 is 8 months newer than o3-mini.
Jan 30, 2025
1.1 years ago
Sep 29, 2025
5 months ago
8mo newerKnowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
o3-mini has a knowledge cutoff of 2023-09-30, while Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a cutoff of 2025-01-31.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 has more recent training data (up to 2025-01-31), making it potentially better informed about events through that date compared to o3-mini (2023-09-30).
Sep 2023
Jan 2025
1.3 yr newerProvider Availability
o3-mini is available from Azure, OpenAI. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is available from Anthropic. The availability of providers can affect quality of the model and reliability.
o3-mini
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Outputs Comparison
Key Takeaways
o3-mini
View detailsOpenAI
Claude Sonnet 4.5
View detailsAnthropic
Detailed Comparison
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