Is Claude Sonnet 4 a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Claude Sonnet 4 on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026
As of Sep 23, 2026, Claude Sonnet 4 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Gemini 3.8 Flash scores 155.4 higher and costs 75% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
Gemini 3.8 Flash is both better and cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4: 155.4 points higher on LMArena and 75% less per million tokens, $4.50 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1339.3
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$6.00/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1494.7
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$1.50/M
Claude Sonnet 4 takes image, text, file, returns up to 64,000 tokens from a 200,000-token context, and is listed by 2 sellers.
Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 32 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Claude Sonnet 4 scores 1339.3 at $6.00 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 1494.7 +155.4 | $1.50/M | 75% |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | 1490.5 +151.2 | $1.50/M | 75% |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | 1489.7 +150.4 | $2.00/M | 67% |
| Muse Spark 1.1 | 1480.2 +140.9 | $2.00/M | 67% |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | 1480.1 +140.8 | $4.50/M | 25% |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1476.1 +136.8 | $1.50/M | 75% |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1475.7 +136.4 | $3.38/M | 44% |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 1458.3 +119.0 | $6.00/M | 0% |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | 1457.8 +118.5 | $3.44/M | 43% |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | 1455.1 +115.8 | $4.00/M | 33% |
| GPT-5.4 | 1452.6 +113.3 | $5.63/M | 6% |
| Grok 4.5 | 1450.1 +110.8 | $3.00/M | 50% |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | 1446.2 +106.9 | $4.50/M | 25% |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | 1442.2 +102.9 | $4.00/M | 33% |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | 1438.3 +99.0 | $6.00/M | 0% |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | 1435.5 +96.2 | $0.850/M | 86% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1429.9 +90.6 | $0.450/M | 93% |
| Grok 4.6 | 1429.9 +90.6 | $3.00/M | 50% |
| GPT-5.1 | 1422.6 +83.3 | $3.44/M | 43% |
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | 1420.6 +81.3 | $3.00/M | 50% |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 1417.3 +78.0 | $0.850/M | 86% |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | 1415.3 +76.0 | $0.563/M | 91% |
| GPT-5.2 | 1412.4 +73.1 | $4.81/M | 20% |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | 1412.1 +72.8 | $1.69/M | 72% |
| o3 | 1409.9 +70.6 | $3.50/M | 42% |
| GPT-5 | 1406.1 +66.8 | $3.44/M | 43% |
| Grok 4.3 | 1397.7 +58.4 | $1.56/M | 74% |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 1396.6 +57.3 | $2.00/M | 67% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.0 +33.7 | $0.688/M | 89% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.9 +33.6 | $0.463/M | 92% |
| Nova 2 Lite | 1362.6 +23.3 | $0.850/M | 86% |
| o4 Mini | 1353.2 +13.9 | $1.93/M | 68% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLM 5.3 | 1475.1 | $1.29/M | image, file |
| Kimi K3 | 1472.3 | $6.00/M | file |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1471.9 | $0.237/M | file |
| GLM 5.2 | 1466.9 | $0.998/M | image, file |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 1464.8 | $0.544/M | image, file |
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