Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs o4-mini— Pricing & Token Cost Comparison
Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) and o4-mini (OpenAI).
Side-by-side pricing
| Feature | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | OpenAI |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $3.00 | $1.10 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $15.00 | $4.40 |
| Context caching | Yes — 90% off cached tokens | No |
| Batch API discount | Not available | 50% off |
| Context window | 200K tokens | 200K tokens |
| Tokenizer | Anthropic tokenizer | o200k_base (tiktoken) |
Real-world cost example
1,000 API requests per month, each with 500 input tokens and 200 output tokens (500K input + 200K output total).
Claude Sonnet 4.6
$4.5000
Input: $1.5000 + Output: $3.0000
o4-mini
$1.4300
Input: $0.5500 + Output: $0.8800
o4-mini is 68% cheaper for this workload — saving $3.0700 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 cheaper than o4-mini?
- No, o4-mini is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $1.10/1M input and $4.40/1M output tokens, it costs $1.4300 versus $4.5000 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 — a 68% difference.
- What is the context window of Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs o4-mini?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports a 200K token context window. o4-mini supports a 200K token context window. A larger context window lets you include more text — documents, conversation history, or code — in a single API call.
- Do Claude Sonnet 4.6 or o4-mini support context caching or batch discounts?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 supports context caching (90% off repeated tokens). It does not offer a batch API discount. o4-mini does not support context caching. It offers a 50% Batch API discount.
Calculate costs for your actual prompt
Paste your prompt into the calculator and get exact token counts using each model's real tokenizer — all in your browser.
Open calculator