LLMversus

GPT-3.5 Turbo vs GPT-4o Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Sep 14, 2026By LLMversusUpdated September 17, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare GPT-3.5 Turbo and GPT-4o Mini across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-3.5 TurboGPT-4o Mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.500$0.150
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.50$0.600
Context Window
16K
128K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
16,384
Arena ELO
1,120
1,098
Coding ELO
1,100
1,098
TTFT (ms)
150
180
Tokens/sec
100
120
MultimodalNoYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoYes
When to Use GPT-3.5 Turbo

GPT-3.5 Turbo excels at cost-effective, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Widely used

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose
When to Use GPT-4o Mini

GPT-4o Mini excels at chatbots, lightweight-tasks, cost-sensitive tasks.

Strengths:

  • Extremely affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Strong for its price tier
  • Good multimodal support

Best for:

chatbotslightweight-taskscost-sensitive

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