HEAD-TO-HEAD · BUDGET-TIER · VERIFIED 15 JUL 2026

Claude Haiku 4.5 vs GPT-4o mini: which is actually cheaper?

Both are budget-tier models from different providers, which makes this one of the more genuinely useful head-to-head comparisons on this site — same rough capability class, real price and context differences worth knowing before you pick.

SpecClaude Haiku 4.5GPT-4o mini
ProviderAnthropicOpenAI
Input / 1M tokens$1.00$0.15
Output / 1M tokens$5.00$0.60
Context window200K128K

The output price gap

GPT-4o mini is 8.3x cheaper than Claude Haiku 4.5 on output tokens specifically — the number that matters most for any workload that generates more than it reads, like drafting or content generation. For input-heavy workloads the gap is different; check the table above directly for your specific ratio.

Context window

Claude Haiku 4.5 offers the larger context window of the two at 200K tokens. If your task needs to hold a large document, codebase, or long conversation history in a single call, that ceiling can matter more than the per-token price difference.

Worked example

At 150M input and 40M output tokens a month — a realistic budget-tier workload — Claude Haiku 4.5 runs about $350.00/month and GPT-4o mini runs about $46.50/month on standard list pricing.

Prices verified against each provider's official documentation, 15 July 2026. Use the calculator with your own usage for an exact comparison, or see the full price table for every tracked model.

Frequently asked questions

How much does GPT-4o mini save compared to Claude Haiku 4.5?

GPT-4o mini costs about 85% less than Claude Haiku 4.5 on both input and output tokens ($0.15 vs $1.00, $0.60 vs $5.00 per million). At 150M input/40M output monthly, that's $46.50/month versus $350/month.

Which has the bigger context window, Claude Haiku 4.5 or GPT-4o mini?

Claude Haiku 4.5 has a larger context window at 200K tokens versus GPT-4o mini's 128K. For tasks needing longer documents in a single call, Haiku's window is meaningfully bigger despite the higher per-token price.

Is GPT-4o mini good enough to replace Claude Haiku 4.5 for most tasks?

For high-volume, well-defined tasks like classification, extraction, and routing, yes — GPT-4o mini is priced and positioned for exactly this. For nuanced writing or careful instruction-following, Claude Haiku 4.5 often justifies its premium.

What's a realistic monthly bill difference at higher volume?

At 500M input and 100M output tokens a month, Claude Haiku 4.5 costs roughly $1,000/month while GPT-4o mini costs about $135/month — the gap widens in absolute dollars as volume scales.