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Command R vs Phi-4: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $0.15/$0.60. Phi-4 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1130 vs 1100. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 85 tokens/sec. Command R offers a larger 128K context window vs 16K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureCommand RPhi-4
ProviderCohereMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.150$0.065
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.600$0.140
Context Window128K16.384K
Max Output Tokens4,0964,096
Arena ELO1,1401,150
Coding ELO1,1001,130
TTFT (ms)250100
Tokens/sec85160
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionNoNo
When to Use Command R

Choose Command R when you need: very affordable pricing, good rag and grounding capabilities, strong multilingual support, 128k context window. It excels at rag, chatbots, cost-sensitive, multilingual tasks. Its 128K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Very affordable pricing
  • Good RAG and grounding capabilities
  • Strong multilingual support
  • 128K context window

Best for:

ragchatbotscost-sensitivemultilingual
When to Use Phi-4

Choose Phi-4 when you need: ultra-low cost for a capable model, strong math for its size (14b params), very fast inference, can run on consumer hardware. It excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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