Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-4.1 nano

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Anthropic

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a general-purpose language model from Anthropic, released in February 2026 as an update to the Sonnet 4 line that introduced adaptive thinking — a mode where the model automatically calibrates its reasoning depth based on task complexity rather than requiring manual configuration by the developer. The model accepts text and image inputs and integrates natively with web search and code execution tools, consolidating capabilities that previously required separate toolchain setup into a unified API surface. It became the primary workhorse model in the Claude 4 series for code assistance, agentic pipelines, and retrieval-augmented applications that benefit from built-in web access.

GPT-4.1 nano

OpenAI

GPT-4.1 nano is OpenAI's smallest member of the GPT-4.1 family, released in April 2025 alongside GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1 mini as the latency-optimized, cost-minimized option for high-throughput applications. Positioned below GPT-4.1 mini in both size and cost, it was designed for use cases where speed and affordability dominate over raw capability — including tool calling, intent classification, short-form instruction following, and retrieval-augmented lookup tasks. Unlike its larger siblings, it supports fine-tuning, making it a practical candidate for task-specific customization at scale without incurring the cost of fine-tuning larger models.