The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
OpenAI: GPT-4.1 vs OpenAI: GPT-5.4 ·OpenAI vs OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 vs OpenAI: GPT-5.4 — head-to-head comparison

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 profile OpenAI: GPT-5.4 profile All comparisons
OpenAI: GPT-4.1 — OpenAI
Quality
#49 of 61
36based on 4 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#236 of 316
33.2
Output tokens per second
Price
#268 of 340
$3.50
Blended per 1M tokens
In $2.00 · Out $8.00
Cache hit price
#174 of 206
$0.50
per 1M tokens (−75%)
Context
#49 of 345
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
OpenAI: GPT-5.4 — OpenAI
Quality
#10 of 61
90based on 5 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#78 of 316
82.3
Output tokens per second
Price
#299 of 340
$5.62
Blended per 1M tokens
In $2.50 · Out $15.00
Cache hit price
#160 of 206
$0.25
per 1M tokens (−90%)
Context
#15 of 345
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, OpenAI: GPT-4.1 scores 36 and OpenAI: GPT-5.4 scores 90 — a 54-point lead for OpenAI: GPT-5.4. They share 4 published evaluations, with OpenAI: GPT-4.1 ahead on 0 and OpenAI: GPT-5.4 ahead on 4.

Blended pricing is $3.50 per 1M tokens for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 and $5.62 for OpenAI: GPT-5.4 — OpenAI: GPT-4.1 is about 1.6× cheaper.

Throughput is 33 tokens per second for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 and 82 for OpenAI: GPT-5.4, with time to first token at 0.8s and 2.1s. OpenAI: GPT-4.1 accepts 1.05M tokens of context against 1.05M.

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 is proprietary; OpenAI: GPT-5.4 is proprietary. 2 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 2 serve both.

Generated from tracked data on 25 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1OpenAI: GPT-5.4
Known Good Index 36 based on 4 of 6 evaluations 90 based on 5 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $3.50 $5.62
Output tok/s 33 82
Context window 1.05M 1.05M
Providers 2 2
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

IndicesComponents
Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1OpenAI: GPT-5.4
Known Good Index 36 90
Coding Index — 89
Mathematics Index 61 95
Science Index 66 98
Reasoning Index 36 88
Agentic Index 33 89
Openness Index 5 5
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = OpenAI: GPT-4.1 · marker = OpenAI: GPT-5.4 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond67 / 93
MATH / AIME38 / 95
SWE-bench Verified49 / 77
Humanity's Last Exam5 / 36

Right-hand figures read OpenAI: GPT-4.1 / OpenAI: GPT-5.4. OpenAI: GPT-4.1 leads on 0 of 4, OpenAI: GPT-5.4 on 4.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1OpenAI: GPT-5.4
Text Arena — 1,453
Text Arena (style controlled) — 1,466
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Per token typeCache discount
Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1OpenAI: GPT-5.4
Input $/1M $2.00 $2.50
Output $/1M $8.00 $15.00
Blended $/1M $3.50 $5.62
Cache read $/1M $0.500 $0.250
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1OpenAI: GPT-5.4
Context window 1.05M 1.05M
Max output tokens 33k 128k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Median throughput and time to first token across hosting providers

Output speedTime to first token
Throughput and latency

Medians across all tracked providers, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricOpenAI: GPT-4.1OpenAI: GPT-5.4
Output tokens/s 33 82
Time to first token 0.8s 2.1s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

2 hosts · 2 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider OpenAI: GPT-4.1 blendedOpenAI: GPT-4.1 tok/s OpenAI: GPT-5.4 blendedOpenAI: GPT-5.4 tok/s
OpenAI · first party $3.50 59 $2.81 68
Azure · first party $3.50 42 $5.62 79

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →