LLMversus

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

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

⚡ Quick Answer

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.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4 1.5-miniGrok 3-mini
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.400$0.300
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.60$0.500
Context Window
128K
128K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
4,096
Arena ELO
1,180
1,175
Coding ELO
1,200
1,190
TTFT (ms)
140
130
Tokens/sec
120
140
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. 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-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 cheap
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose

Frequently Asked Questions

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