LLMversus

o3-mini vs o4-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

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

⚡ Quick Answer

o4-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1380 vs 1340. o4-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1350 vs 1310.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Featureo3-minio4-mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$1.10$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens$4.40$4.40
Context Window
128K
128K
Max Output Tokens
65,536
32,768
Arena ELO
1,280
1,260
Coding ELO
1,285
1,270
TTFT (ms)
350
180
Tokens/sec
25
105
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingNoYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use o3-mini

Choose o3-mini when you need: strong mathematical reasoning, good coding performance, affordable reasoning model, large output window. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks.

Strengths:

  • Strong reasoning
  • Good math skills
  • Affordable reasoning

Best for:

reasoningmathgeneral-purpose
When to Use o4-mini

Choose o4-mini when you need: excellent reasoning and math capabilities, strong coding performance, affordable for a reasoning model, large output window. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good reasoning

Best for:

general-purposereasoningcoding

Frequently Asked Questions

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