LLMversus

GPT-3.5 Turbo vs o3-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Aug 3, 2026By LLMversusUpdated August 8, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare GPT-3.5 Turbo and o3-mini across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: August 3, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-3.5 Turboo3-mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.500$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.50$4.40
Context Window
16K
128K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
65,536
Arena ELO
1,120
1,348
Coding ELO
1,100
1,348
TTFT (ms)
150
350
Tokens/sec
100
25
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionNoNo
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 o3-mini

o3-mini excels at reasoning, math, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Strong reasoning
  • Good math skills
  • Affordable reasoning

Best for:

reasoningmathgeneral-purpose

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