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GPT-4 1.5-nano vs o3-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 $1.10/$4.40. o3-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1340 vs 1150. GPT-4.1 Nano is faster at 150 tokens/sec vs 55 tokens/sec. o3-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1310 vs 1180. GPT-4.1 Nano offers a larger 1048K context window vs 200K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4 1.5-nanoo3-mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.100$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.400$4.40
Context Window
128K
128K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
65,536
Arena ELO
1,150
1,280
Coding ELO
1,160
1,285
TTFT (ms)
120
350
Tokens/sec
150
25
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
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 o3-mini

Choose o3-mini when you need: strong mathematical reasoning, good coding performance, affordable reasoning model, large output window. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks.

Strengths:

  • Strong reasoning
  • Good math skills
  • Affordable reasoning

Best for:

reasoningmathgeneral-purpose

Frequently Asked Questions

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