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

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

⚡ Quick Answer

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

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

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 Window
128K
128K
Max Output Tokens
16,384
4,096
Arena ELO
1,220
1,175
Coding ELO
1,200
1,190
TTFT (ms)
180
130
Tokens/sec
120
140
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 cheap
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose

Frequently Asked Questions

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