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

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

⚡ Quick Answer

GPT-4.1 Nano is significantly cheaper at $0.10/$0.40 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. Grok 3 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1290 vs 1150. GPT-4.1 Nano is faster at 150 tokens/sec vs 80 tokens/sec. Grok 3 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1300 vs 1180. GPT-4.1 Nano offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4 1.5-nanoGrok 3
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.100$3.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.400$15.00
Context Window
128K
200K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
8,192
Arena ELO
1,150
1,285
Coding ELO
1,160
1,280
TTFT (ms)
120
200
Tokens/sec
150
90
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use GPT-4 1.5-nano

Choose GPT-4.1 Nano when you need: ultra-low pricing, 1m context window, very fast inference, ideal for simple tasks at scale. It excels at chatbots, classification, cost-sensitive, high-volume 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:

  • Super cheap
  • Very fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivefast-inference
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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