GPT-4 1 vs GPT-4o Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

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

⚡ Quick Answer

GPT-4o Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens vs $2.00/$8.00. GPT-4.1 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1320 vs 1200. GPT-4o Mini is faster at 120 tokens/sec vs 88 tokens/sec. GPT-4.1 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1290 vs 1220. GPT-4.1 offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4 1GPT-4o Mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$2.00$0.150
Output Price / 1M tokens$8.00$0.600
Context Window
8.192K
128K
Max Output Tokens
2,048
16,384
Arena ELO
1,200
1,220
Coding ELO
1,210
1,200
TTFT (ms)
160
180
Tokens/sec
85
120
MultimodalNoYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoYes
When to Use GPT-4 1

Choose GPT-4.1 when you need: 1m token context window, excellent coding performance, strong instruction following, competitive pricing for its capability. It excels at coding, long-context, agents, general-purpose tasks. Its 1048K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Good quality
  • Affordable
  • Reliable

Best for:

general-purposecoding
When to Use GPT-4o Mini

Choose GPT-4o Mini when you need: extremely affordable pricing, fast response times, strong for its price tier, good multimodal support. It excels at chatbots, lightweight-tasks, cost-sensitive tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Extremely affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Strong for its price tier
  • Good multimodal support

Best for:

chatbotslightweight-taskscost-sensitive

Frequently Asked Questions

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