LLMversus

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

Pricing verified Sep 14, 2026By LLMversusUpdated September 17, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare o3 and o4-mini across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: September 14, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Featureo3o4-mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$2.00$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens$8.00$4.40
Context Window
200K
128K
Max Output Tokens
100,000
32,768
Arena ELO
1,340
1,260
Coding ELO
1,320
1,270
TTFT (ms)
600
180
Tokens/sec
15
105
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use o3

o3 excels at reasoning, coding, math tasks.

Strengths:

  • Highest reasoning capability
  • Best math performance
  • Code execution

Best for:

reasoningcodingmath
When to Use o4-mini

o4-mini excels at general-purpose, reasoning, coding tasks.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good reasoning

Best for:

general-purposereasoningcoding

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