GPT-3.5 Turbo vs o4-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare GPT-3.5 Turbo and o4-mini across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-3.5 Turboo4-mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.500$0.500
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.50$2.00
Context Window
16K
128K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
32,768
Arena ELO
1,120
1,260
Coding ELO
1,100
1,270
TTFT (ms)
150
180
Tokens/sec
100
105
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
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 o4-mini

o4-mini excels at general-purpose, reasoning, coding tasks.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good reasoning

Best for:

general-purposereasoningcoding

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