GPT-4 1.5-mini vs Grok 3: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 20, 2026By LLMversusUpdated June 14, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

GPT-4.1 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.40/$1.60 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. Grok 3 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1290 vs 1230. GPT-4.1 Mini is faster at 115 tokens/sec vs 80 tokens/sec. Grok 3 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1300 vs 1240. GPT-4.1 Mini offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4 1.5-miniGrok 3
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.400$3.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.60$15.00
Context Window
128K
200K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
8,192
Arena ELO
1,180
1,285
Coding ELO
1,200
1,280
TTFT (ms)
140
200
Tokens/sec
120
90
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use GPT-4 1.5-mini

Choose GPT-4.1 Mini when you need: 1m token context window at low cost, great balance of speed and quality, strong coding for a mini model, affordable for high-volume use. It excels at chatbots, long-context, cost-sensitive tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two. Its 1048K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose
When to Use Grok 3

Choose Grok 3 when you need: strong benchmark performance, good reasoning capabilities, vision and multimodal support, fast for its capability tier. It excels at general-purpose, reasoning, coding tasks.

Strengths:

  • Latest xAI model
  • Strong reasoning
  • Large context

Best for:

general-purposecodingreasoning

Frequently Asked Questions

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