LLMversus

Grok 3-mini vs Phi-4: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

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

⚡ Quick Answer

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $0.30/$0.50. Grok 3 Mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1200 vs 1130. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 110 tokens/sec. Grok 3 Mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1220 vs 1150. Grok 3 Mini offers a larger 128K context window vs 16K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGrok 3-miniPhi-4
ProviderxAIMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.300$0.065
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.500$0.140
Context Window
128K
16.384K
Max Output Tokens
4,096
4,096
Arena ELO
1,175
1,150
Coding ELO
1,190
1,130
TTFT (ms)
130
100
Tokens/sec
140
160
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionNoNo
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. Its 128K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Very cheap
  • Fast
  • Large context

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose
When to Use Phi-4

Choose Phi-4 when you need: ultra-low cost for a capable model, strong math for its size (14b params), very fast inference, can run on consumer hardware. It excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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