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

Verdict

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.

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 Window128K16.384K
Max Output Tokens16,3844,096
Arena ELO1,2201,150
Coding ELO1,2001,130
TTFT (ms)180100
Tokens/sec110160
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 affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Good for simple tasks
  • Reasoning capabilities at low cost

Best for:

chatbotscost-sensitivelightweight-tasks
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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