Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview
Head-to-head API pricing and cost comparison between Anthropic’s Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 and OpenAI’s OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview. Prices auto-refresh daily from OpenRouter.
OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview is 17% cheaper for input tokens; OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview also wins on output tokens.
Side-by-side comparison
| Spec | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 | OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Input price (per 1M) | $3.00 | $2.50 |
| Cached input (per 1M) | $0.30 | — |
| Output price (per 1M) | $15.00 | $10.00 |
| Batch input (per 1M) | $1.50 | $1.25 |
| Batch output (per 1M) | $7.50 | $5.00 |
| Reasoning price (per 1M) | — | — |
| Context window | 1000K | 128K |
| Vision support | Yes | No |
| Caching support | Yes | No |
| Batch API | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning capability | No | No |
Monthly cost at volume
Estimated monthly API spend at common production traffic levels (input/output tokens per request shown).
| Volume | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 | OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
1K req/day 500in / 200out tokens | $135.00 | $97.50 | $37.50 OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview wins |
10K req/day 1500in / 500out tokens | $3,600 | $2,625 | $975.00 OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview wins |
100K req/day 3000in / 800out tokens | $63,000 | $46,500 | $16,500 OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview wins |
1M req/day 8000in / 2000out tokens | $1,620,000 | $1,200,000 | $420,000 OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview wins |
Adjust input/output token counts, request volume, batch & cached pricing.
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Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview?
For input tokens, OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview is roughly 17% cheaper at $2.50/1M vs $3.00/1M. For output tokens, OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview wins at $10.00/1M. Real-world cost depends on your input/output ratio — use the calculator to model your actual workload.
What’s the context window difference?
Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 has a context window of 1000K tokens. OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview offers 128K tokens. Larger context windows are valuable for long documents, RAG pipelines, and multi-turn conversations — but they come with higher input-token bills if you fill them every request.
Should I use Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview?
Choose Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you’re already on the Anthropic stack, want broad ecosystem support, or prefer its feature set. Choose OpenAI: GPT-4o Search Preview for OpenAI’s ecosystem, or its cheaper input tokens. Run a small benchmark on your own prompts before committing — price is only one axis.
How are these prices kept current?
Prices are pulled directly from OpenRouter’s public models API once every 24 hours via a Convex cron job, then normalized to per-1M-token figures. Last refresh: Apr 21, 2026.