GPT-4o Mini vs Grok 3 Mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

GPT-4o Mini and Grok 3 Mini are closely matched across pricing, benchmarks, and speed. Your choice depends on specific use-case requirements.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4o MiniGrok 3 Mini
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.150$0.300
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.600$0.500
Context Window128K128K
Max Output Tokens16,38416,384
Arena ELO1,2201,220
Coding ELO1,2001,200
TTFT (ms)180180
Tokens/sec120110
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesNo
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
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 affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Good for simple tasks
  • Reasoning capabilities at low cost

Best for:

chatbotscost-sensitivelightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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