GPT-4 1.5-nano vs Grok 3-mini: 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 $0.30/$0.50. Grok 3 Mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1200 vs 1150. GPT-4.1 Nano is faster at 150 tokens/sec vs 110 tokens/sec. Grok 3 Mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1220 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-mini
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.100$0.300
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.400$0.500
Context Window
128K
128K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
4,096
Arena ELO
1,150
1,175
Coding ELO
1,160
1,190
TTFT (ms)
120
130
Tokens/sec
150
140
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-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.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose

Frequently Asked Questions

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