LV
LLMversus

GPT-4.1 Mini vs Grok 3 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Grok 3 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.30/$0.50 per million tokens vs $0.40/$1.60. GPT-4.1 Mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1230 vs 1200. GPT-4.1 Mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1240 vs 1220. GPT-4.1 Mini offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4.1 MiniGrok 3 Mini
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.400$0.300
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.60$0.500
Context Window1.047576M128K
Max Output Tokens32,76816,384
Arena ELO1,2401,220
Coding ELO1,2301,200
TTFT (ms)190180
Tokens/sec115110
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesNo
When to Use GPT-4.1 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. Its 1048K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • 1M token context window at low cost
  • Great balance of speed and quality
  • Strong coding for a mini model
  • Affordable for high-volume use

Best for:

chatbotslong-contextcost-sensitive
When to Use Grok 3 Mini

Choose Grok 3 Mini when you need: very affordable pricing, fast response times, good for simple tasks, reasoning capabilities at low cost. It excels at chatbots, cost-sensitive, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Very affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Good for simple tasks
  • Reasoning capabilities at low cost

Best for:

chatbotscost-sensitivelightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Comparisons

Claude Opus 4 vs GPT-4.1 MiniClaude Opus 4 vs Grok 3 MiniGemini 2 5 Pro vs GPT-4.1 MiniGemini 2 5 Pro vs Grok 3 MiniGPT-4.1 Mini vs O4 MiniGrok 3 Mini vs O4 MiniDeepseek R1 vs GPT-4.1 MiniDeepseek R1 vs Grok 3 MiniGPT-4.1 Mini vs O3 MiniGrok 3 Mini vs O3 MiniGPT-4.1 Mini vs Grok 3Grok 3 vs Grok 3 MiniGpt 4 1 vs GPT-4.1 MiniGpt 4 1 vs Grok 3 MiniGPT-4.1 Mini vs Llama 4 MaverickGrok 3 Mini vs Llama 4 MaverickClaude Sonnet 4 vs GPT-4.1 MiniClaude Sonnet 4 vs Grok 3 MiniDeepseek V3 vs GPT-4.1 MiniDeepseek V3 vs Grok 3 Mini