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o4-mini vs o3
A detailed comparison of o4-mini (OpenAI) and o3 (OpenAI) across pricing, performance, and features.
Pricing Comparison
| Metric | o4-mini | o3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $1.10 | $0.40 | -64% |
| Output / 1M tokens | $4.40 | $1.60 | -64% |
| Context window | 200K | 200K | — |
| Max output | 100K | 100K | — |
Benchmark Comparison
| Benchmark | o4-mini | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 85% | 87% |
| HumanEval | 93.5% | 94.5% |
| GPQA | 76% | 79.2% |
Capabilities
| Capability | o4-mini | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| code | ✓ | ✓ |
| reasoning | ✓ | ✓ |
| text | ✓ | ✓ |
| tool-use | ✓ | ✓ |
| vision | ✓ | ✓ |
o4-mini Strengths
- ✓Affordable reasoning model
- ✓200K context window
- ✓Good for math and science
o4-mini Weaknesses
- ✗Slower than non-reasoning models
- ✗Reasoning tokens add to effective cost
o3 Strengths
- ✓Recently repriced — now very cheap
- ✓Excellent logical reasoning
- ✓200K context window
o3 Weaknesses
- ✗Slower due to reasoning overhead
- ✗Overkill for simple tasks
Quick Verdict
Best value: o3 is the more affordable option at $0.4/$1.6 per 1M tokens.
Higher benchmarks: o3 scores higher on average across available benchmarks (86.9% avg).
Choose o3 if cost matters most. Choose o4-mini if you need the best possible quality for complex tasks.