o4-mini vs Phi-3 Medium: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 8, 2026

⚡ Quick Answer

Compare o4-mini and Phi-3 Medium across pricing, benchmarks, and capabilities.

Updated: April 8, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Featureo4-miniPhi-3 Medium
ProviderOpenAIMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.500$0.170
Output Price / 1M tokens$2.00$0.170
Context Window
128K
128K
Max Output Tokens
32,768
4,096
Arena ELO
1,260
1,170
Coding ELO
1,270
1,175
TTFT (ms)
180
150
Tokens/sec
105
100
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionNoNo
When to Use o4-mini

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

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good reasoning

Best for:

general-purposereasoningcoding
When to Use Phi-3 Medium

Phi-3 Medium excels at cost-effective, general-purpose tasks.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good instruction following

Best for:

cost-effectivegeneral-purpose

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