The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
OpenAI: GPT-4.1 vs OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano ·OpenAI vs OpenAI

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 vs OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano — head-to-head comparison

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 profile OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano 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 Nano — OpenAI
Quality
#37 of 61
57based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#28 of 316
120.9
Output tokens per second
Price
#56 of 340
$0.14
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.05 · Out $0.40
Cache hit price
#13 of 206
$0.005
per 1M tokens (−90%)
Context
#105 of 345
400k
tokens (~600 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, OpenAI: GPT-4.1 scores 36 and OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano scores 57 — a 21-point lead for OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano. They share 3 published evaluations, with OpenAI: GPT-4.1 ahead on 0 and OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano ahead on 3.

Blended pricing is $3.50 per 1M tokens for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 and $0.14 for OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano — OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano is about 25.5× cheaper.

Throughput is 33 tokens per second for OpenAI: GPT-4.1 and 121 for OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano, with time to first token at 0.8s and 2.9s. OpenAI: GPT-4.1 accepts 1.05M tokens of context against 400k.

OpenAI: GPT-4.1 is proprietary; OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano 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 Nano
Known Good Index 36 based on 4 of 6 evaluations 57 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $3.50 $0.14
Output tok/s 33 121
Context window 1.05M 400k
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 Nano
Known Good Index 36 57
Mathematics Index 61 89
Science Index 66 69
Reasoning Index 36 —
Agentic Index 33 21
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 Nano · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond67 / 69
MATH / AIME38 / 81
MATH Level 583 / 95

Right-hand figures read OpenAI: GPT-4.1 / OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano. OpenAI: GPT-4.1 leads on 0 of 3, OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano on 3.

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.

Neither model currently appears in an arena we ingest.

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 Nano
Input $/1M $2.00 $0.05
Output $/1M $8.00 $0.40
Blended $/1M $3.50 $0.14
Cache read $/1M $0.500 $0.005
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 Nano
Context window 1.05M 400k
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 Nano
Output tokens/s 33 121
Time to first token 0.8s 2.9s
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 Nano blendedOpenAI: GPT-5 Nano tok/s
OpenAI · first party $3.50 59 $0.07 225
Azure · first party $3.50 42 $0.14 69

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) Full attribution →